


THE BLACKBIRD AND THE ENCAMPMENT OF ANGELS

by sfmpco



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Post-Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, Sherlolly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-11-28 11:49:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 63,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11417340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sfmpco/pseuds/sfmpco
Summary: This is a sequel to THE BLACKBIRD AND THE SPARROW'S NEST.  The books should be read in the following order:1.  THE BLACKBIRD SINGS AGAIN2.  THE BLACKBIRD AND THE SPARROW'S NEST3.  THE BLACKBIRD AND THE MULTIFARIOUS QUILL4.  THE BLACKBIRD AND THE ENCAMPMENT OF ANGELSThe books were all written before S4 aired, and with the exception of #4, written between HIS LAST VOW and THE ABOMINABLE BRIDE.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I had posted this previously but took it down when I had a stroke in August 2016 and could no longer type to save my life. Then S4 happened, and I knew that would mess with my head. But I will try this again and hopefully finish it. I have 13 chapters completed, but I will release them slowly as I build my own momentum for working on it again.

Trinity College, Cambridge.  Melting pot of some of the greatest minds in the sciences including Sir Isaac Newton, and proud foster of many scientific Nobel Prize laureates.

Sherlock had visited Trinity College as an undergraduate, but it had been nearly 20 years since he had been back.  It had awed him then, and even as he crossed the grassy courtyard now, he felt as if he was walking on hallowed ground, and it put a little lump in his throat.  Such historical, brilliant minds had been there.  Had he pursued a residency, he likely would have been accepted as a chemistry fellow, but that was taking his learning into a direction that didn’t quite align with his passions in criminal forensics and puzzles.  Nevertheless, he knew that he was walking in the same footsteps as great scientific minds had before him, and he felt rightfully humbled, even a bit sentimental.  He didn’t believe in ghosts, but somehow he could sense their lingering essence, and he felt at home.  He inhaled deeply in the scent of academia.

As he stood alone in the middle of the Great Court near the fountain, he could hear the faint strains of the Trinity Choir in rehearsal.  Something Bach, but it was too faint to identify completely.  As it was June 1, he assumed they might be in rehearsal for the graduation ceremonies that would forthcoming within the week, but he listened to it for a moment.

He wasn’t actually alone, however.  Sometimes he was able to filter out all people around him as if they weren’t there, but in fact there were students and professors walking through the courtyard with various chatter, most of it definitely worth filtering out.  While he might have been in an academic setting, the chatter outside of classroom was largely inconsequential.

A gentle tap on his shoulder made him turn around. “Mr. Holmes?”

Sherlock found himself facing a tall, angular white-haired man in black professor robe and colors.  “Professor Durbin.  And please.  Call me Sherlock. Mr. Holmes is my father.”  Sherlock removed his gloves and shook the professor’s hand.  Durbin had a firm, sure grip and looked Sherlock directly in the eyes.

“Your reputation precedes you.” he said.

“Cliché, but all true.” Sherlock said. “Well, mostly.”

Durbin shook his head and winced at his own words.  “Always a bad idea to rehearse what you want to say.  Especially when you’re meeting a celebrity.”

“No, no. None of that celebrity nonsense.  I’m a consulting detective, nothing more.  The rest is just twaddle.”

“Oh, you’re a bit more than that, Sherlock.  I’ve read some of your website.  Brilliant stuff.  You should continue with it.”

“So I’ve been told.  Perhaps some day.”

Durbin almost smiled, but there was a sparkle in his eye regardless. “Follow me, please.”  

Sherlock began to follow Durbin across the Great Court. A bell struck the noon hour, and Durbin stopped both of them and said, “Look.  There’s one having a go at it. He must make the four hundred yards in under forty-three seconds. Generally only for Freshers on the day of the Matriculation Dinner, but it’s a good measure for others.”

“If he were running in a straight line, highly probable in that time.  Corners will slow him, but he started in the corner.  Smart.  Only has to navigate three corners instead of four.  Will save time.” Sherlock said.

“Excellent deduction.” Durbin said.

As the bells chimed, the runner sprinted around the perimeter of the Great Court to see if he could make it by the twelfth chime.  It had never been accomplished, but that never stopped students from trying to claim the title.  It was such a common sight to see someone try that few stopped to take notice, but there was always the hope for success, and a few encouraging cheers rose up.  Even Sherlock found himself inwardly cheering for the young man.  As the twelfth bell chimed, however, the young man was still several yards short.

“Ah.  So close.” Durbin said. He called out, “Next time, Albert!”  He turned back to Sherlock.  “That’s Albert Elkins.  Brilliant astrophysics fellow.  I.Q. bordering the 170s.  Also quite the runner.  He hopes to represent Britain in the next summer Olympics. Do you run, Sherlock?”

“A bit.  Comes in handy when I have to give chase, which I do on occasion.” Sherlock said.

“Albert says his mind relaxes and helps him solve problems when he runs.  The faster he runs, the more problems he solves. Does it help your mind relax also?”

“Perhaps if I did it more often.” Sherlock said as they began walking out of the Great Court.  

“As I understand it, your I.Q. bests even our brightest fellows,” Durbin said, “and yet you did not choose to pursue a higher education other than being a graduate chemist.”

“In those days my chemistry took on more of a personal nature.” Sherlock said.

“Drugs.” Durbin said.

“Excellent deduction.” Sherlock confirmed.

“I cheated.  I researched you.” Durbin said with a half smile.

“Research is never cheating.” Sherlock said.

“But some cheat at research, and that’s why you’re here.  Come. This way.”

A few minutes of walking and they had made their way to the Scholar’s Green, then across the Avenue to the walkway beside the south paddock.  They walked mostly in silence, and occasionally Durbin looked behind him as if he was being followed.

“Are you familiar with the Miller-Urey Experiment?” he asked.

“Of course. Groundbreaking.”

“Groundbreaking but false in its premise and execution,” He said, “and yet it is taught as truth.”

“False?  How so?”

“On the simple premise that the experiment was supposed to simulate how the basic components of life could have started, and yet the experiment was completely designed - designed, I might add, on what has neither been seen nor observed. Designed, Mr. Holmes.  There was a designer.  That alone negates it, but there are other issues as well.”

Sherlock stopped and held up his hand. “Before we go any further on this, I want you to know that I do not share my brother Ford’s view on how this world came into being by an almighty creator.”

“Your brother was a good man and a thorough scholar.  I am so sorry for your loss.” Durbin said.  “While I also was not aligned with his personal beliefs, I have no problem at all exposing blatant scientific lies when they are either a mathematical impossibility or when the scientific community purposes to deceive by falsifying a hypothesis.”

“You believe evolution is impossible?”

“You are an Atheist, correct?”

“No.” Sherlock said.  “Atheism is itself a set of beliefs, and I adhere no more to them than I do any other religious system.  I simply look at the facts of science.  I believe in science.”

“As an Atheist I am much in agreement with that point of view.”

Sherlock stopped for a moment and looked him over thoroughly.  “Interesting.  I had assumed my brother had only referred me to people of the Christian affiliation.”

“You of all people should know better than to assume.” Durbin said.  “And like your brother, I also believe evolution is a mathematical improbability.  Any odds greater than one in 10⁵⁰ is considered impossible.  The possibility of evolution occurring has been estimated to be as high as one in 10⁴⁰⁰⁰⁰. I am first and foremost a mathematician.” Durbin said.

“Are you then advocating transpermia?” Sherlock asked.

“I’m not advocating anything at all.  If spontaneous life is impossible here under perfect conditions, it is impossible anywhere.” He replied.  “Your mother was a well-known mathematician, I remember.  She was well on her way to a Fields Medal in the late 1970s.  Could have been the first woman to achieve it, but she suddenly retired from the mathematics world, I assume, to stay home and see you through your childhood.”

“Guilty as charged.” Sherlock cocked a half smile.

“Genius runs in your family apparently.”

“Yes, but discussing my family is not why I’m here, and I should add that I’m only here because I made a promise to my departed brother to examine his research for myself.  Apparently he thought I had drunk the Kool-aid of a British education and never thought things out on my own.  He left me a list of people to contact in his attempt to proselytize me, and so here I am.  Proceed with your attempt at conversion.”

Durbin laughed and clapped Sherlock on the shoulder.  “I’m afraid that is not my specialty.  I only look for facts, and math gives me all the facts I require.  It is black and white.  Math demands that science must obey its own absolute laws, and yet researchers will purposefully create hoaxes to support their ideas, and many of these hoaxes are taught as fact even in the textbooks used by this university.  I remember that you once said that you never make an exception because the exception disproves the rule.”

“It’s true.”

“You have also said that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

“I’m not sure whether I should be flattered or slightly unnerved.”

“I would challenge you, then, to actually live by those words.  Otherwise, they are just trifle.” Durbin looked behind them again. “You’ll forgive me, but I have been ill at ease of late. I have received threats for my views.  An esteemed colleague with similar views died of very mysterious circumstances a few months ago.  In fact, three of my colleagues have died mysteriously within the past year.  When you expose the frauds and hoaxes in science, you create a lot of enemies, but you probably think I’m just paranoid.” Durbin said.

“It does seem a bit absurd.  Science is about finding the truth not about trying to cover it up.”

“Is it?  Or is it about profit?  I believe it is about the latter, and that clouds the judgment because it is a conflict of interest.  If, for example, I was to tell you that the earth is actually cooling and not experiencing global warming, but you have millions of quid in funding, you would want to silence me, even if I could prove it.  Science has never been about science, Sherlock.  It’s about greed, and I daresay that greed is a far worse blight on the condition of the world than any religion ever has been.  It is greed that keeps us from solving the world’s greatest problems. Greed knows no socioeconomic boundaries, no race, no age, no religion, no creed, no sexual orientation.  And it has always been a problem in the sciences.  A paleontologist near the end of his field season and funds suddenly finds a shinbone of an ape, declares it an ancient hominin species. Fraud, Sherlock.  This is what your brother wished for you to investigate.  To find the truth for yourself, to use your vast archive of knowledge and skills of observation to examine the pictures and hold them to the highest mathematical and scientific scrutiny.”

“I must confess that I only half-heartedly agreed to it on his deathbed just to appease him.  I believe that pursuing this will pit me against some of the greatest scientific minds both living and dead, and I will be up for public scorn and ridicule.”

“Ah, I see.” Durbin seemed a bit disappointed.  “Then I have rambled on and wasted your time.  Forget what I said.”

Now Sherlock felt slightly guilty which was the point.  “Conspiracy theories are hard to disseminate.  Too many emotions when preconceived ideas are involved.  Difficult to find the truth.”

“Yes, I agree.”

“Difficult but not impossible.” Sherlock added. “If there have been murders, perhaps I could be of service.”

“I am quite certain I couldn’t afford your fees, no offence.”

“I have a sliding scale.” Sherlock said.  “I’ll take the case. In honor of my brother.” As he shook Durbin’s hand again, a new thought occurred to him. “Do you think my brother knew about these allegedly mysterious deaths?”

“You can be sure of it.” Durbin said.

“I hope you’re not implying his death was mysterious.”

“I’m not ruling out anything anymore.  It’s just another factor in the equation.” Durbin said.

Sherlock spent two hours with Durbin during which they discussed math and science over a few cups of coffee, and although Sherlock remained resistant to Durbin’s theories, he felt wonderfully at home and alive in such a thought-provoking encounter with someone clearly highly intelligent who used logic with science to form conclusions.  He rarely had those interactions, and he missed them.  He could have such discussions with Mycroft if Mycroft were inclined but his brother wasn’t.  Science and math bored him, but he could discuss international and domestic politics until his dying breath although such discussions with Sherlock generally ended in heated arguments.  Here at Cambridge, however, there was only delightful interaction with another brilliant mind.  Durbin didn’t have his extraordinary gifts of observation, of course, but the interaction was refreshing nonetheless.

What he discovered during his time with Durbin was that one of the men Sherlock had promised to contact  as part of his brother’s dying wish, Dr. Lawrence Greely, was one of the three dead scholars.  He reasoned his dying brother had not known about the death of his colleague as he had been struggling with his own quickly fading mortality, elsewise he would not have asked Sherlock to meet with him.  Well, no great loss in Sherlock’s mind as Greely had been a creationist, much as Ford Holmes had been, and Sherlock felt he’d had his fill of that.

Durbin showed him the threatening emails that had come in.  He had printed them out, and he made copies for Sherlock which included original IP addresses.  A quick check of the IP addresses revealed that one came out of Russia and the other from China.  Hardly a threat but bullying to be sure.   Sherlock promised to continue his investigation but also had to leave Cambridge that same day.

Sherlock returned by rail to London.  He didn’t believe for a moment that Ford’s death had been by anything other than the cancer except that Durbin had planted a seed of doubt, and it pricked at his mind like an invisible splinter.  It was always possible that something could have been introduced into Ford’s environment or even his pre-organic diet that had caused the cancer.   If it was introduced at his work place, it would have had to be specific only to him.  That would, of course, have meant that someone at his work was suspect.  This idea was potentially so devastating that he knew he could not mention it to his parents or even to Mycroft.  This was a truth he had to uncover on his own.  However, was this the real reason Ford had made him promise on his deathbed to begin to search for truth?  Did he anticipate that Sherlock would meet with his colleagues and uncover these potentially mysterious deaths of scientists?  Sherlock felt he was reaching too far to grasp a thread of an idea, perhaps a thread of a very bad idea.

He could not afford to dwell on the idea of Ford’s death being anything other than what he had personally witnessed.  It had been three months since the funeral, and much had happened in his private life since then including a ten-day mission with MI6, two months of pre-marital counseling with Molly, and an upcoming very private wedding ceremony at his parents’ home.  Workmen would come to begin upgrades on 221A, 221B, and the beginning of the renovation of 221C which would become his new laboratory thereby freeing up his kitchen to be an actual kitchen.

Molly came by 221B for a few hours that evening to help him get things prepared for the workmen as he had put it off and suddenly was in a bit of a panic about his life being disrupted by construction.  Mrs. Hudson also fussed a bit.

“Sherlock, you do promise to keep a good eye on things? No tearing out whole walls and such.” she said.

He gave her a kiss on the cheek and squeezed her shoulders.  “No need to worry. Enjoy your stay with your sister.  Everything is completely under control.”

“And what about you?  Will you be staying with Molly?”

“No, no.” he assured her.  “I’ll be staying here and holding down the fort. Now have a lovely time. I will call you if anything unusual presents itself.”

The work on the pipes was estimated to take a few days at minimum, and during the day the water would be shut off.  Sherlock had carried up several gallon containers of water just so that he could at the very least make certain his kettle was always full and to wash his hands throughout the day as necessary.    

Not long after Mrs. Hudson left, Molly also made her excuses to leave.  “I should be on my way too.  Do you want to go for dinner tomorrow?  You’ll have been cooped up all day here.”

“I’ve got a project to start.  I doubt I’ll notice.”

“So you do or don’t want to have dinner with me tomorrow night?” she asked as he had missed the question.

“Oh, sorry.  No, I’ll be fine on my own.” He said.  

Now he had answered the question but had missed the point of the question.  She knew he meant no offense.  His brain was simply onto other matters.

“What do you plan to do for a shower while your loo is being redone? You can always shower at my place if you want.”

His bathroom, which hadn’t had its fixtures updated since the 1940s, except for the toilet which was from the 1970s, had never really bothered him as it performed its functions satisfactorily, but he felt that along with other areas of his life, it too needed upgrading.  The entire bathroom and all fixtures would be completely modernized.  In place of the old claw-foot tub/shower would be a fiberglass shower stall/tub unit.  There would be new cabinetry with sink and storage and a lovely new toilet.  The floors and walls would all be tiled as well, although he planned for the tiles to reflect the colors of the wallpapers throughout the flat.

“Mrs. Hudson’s flat will be done first, and I’ll use that in the interim.” He said, and then he realized what he was missing again.  “Oh.  Thank you, but it’s a bit far just for a wash, and I’m not entirely comfortable leaving here while so much is happening. As for having dinner with you, we’ll see.  I might be feeling quite petulant.”

“How is that different than normal?” she said, and then she winked at him.  Teasing.  He wasn’t always quick to recognize it.  She wrapped her arms around him and leaned up to give him a quick kiss.  “Just remember that my shower is big enough for two.”

“As we have discovered.” He grinned as his deep baritone rumbled through her.  “All this won’t take long, I promise.” He cradled her head in his hands and kissed her deeply.  “Text me when you get home so that I’ll know you’re safe.”

Not thirty minutes later Molly texted him that she was home safely, and he took a long look around his flat.  His life was changing, and starting the following day he would not be turning back the clock.  He couldn’t deny that the changes unnerved him a bit, but he reasoned that he would adjust and eventually think nothing of them.  He knew such changes were logical and necessary, and there would doubtless be other changes as well even after those were done although he was adamant that the kitchen appliances would remain.  Some things just belonged with the flat including the glass-paneled doors that separated the kitchen from the living room and the same glass door that lead from his bedroom to the bathroom.   Someone had installed the doors in the 1920s, and he liked them and so no reason to change them.

After Mrs. Hudson’s husband had been sent to prison and then executed, she had taken her money and moved from Florida back to her home city of London and had purchased the 221 Baker Street residence.  Although she could have taken the 221B flat, which was the only complete flat, she chose instead to take the small kitchen on the lower level behind Speedy’s while her living quarters were above Sherlock’s living room.  John’s old room had been on the same level as hers although they weren’t connected and had separate entrances.  The upstairs flats had originally been little more than bachelor flats and thus were not equipped like 221B.  

Sherlock had originally been shown John’s room as a possible residence, but he decided that it simply wouldn’t accommodate his needs.  He had wanted a place that was big enough for sleeping quarters, his experiments, and where he could meet with potential clients, and he didn’t want them all in the same room.  Even though it would dangerously stretch his budget to the limit, he agreed to a 12-month lease, put his first and last month’s rent down plus a security deposit (which he lost when he shot the wall), and he started moving in.  Mike Stamford had suggested he get a roommate, but it was a one-bedroom flat.  He knew there was an empty bedroom upstairs, and when John agreed to take the room it was on the condition that the rest of 221B was shared space with equal rights and therefore the rent would be split equally.  It was actually a good arrangement in many ways.  John’s bedroom was big enough to provide more than just sleeping if he really wanted to get away from Sherlock, which happened many times, but he spent a great deal of his time in the shared common areas when he was not working or out on a case with Sherlock.  

Sherlock had retained John’s room as part of the 221B rental, however, as he used it for storage.  He also didn’t want Mrs. Hudson to find a renter for the room thus forcing him to tolerate a potentially intolerable neighbor.  He didn’t want anyone bothering his quiet, and his finances were no longer an issue in continuing with that space.  

It wasn’t really an issue for Mrs. Hudson to have renters at all.  She didn’t actually need the income but just did it to keep busy.  She liked being something of a “house mother,” especially with Sherlock.  Although he was often rude and irascible, she still delighted in bringing up his morning tea and doing his general washing up.  It kept her maternal instincts happy and busy.

Sherlock would now be getting a new roommate.  No, not a roommate.  He had to mentally correct himself.  Although he and Molly had not set a date for their wedding, preparing 221B for her permanent arrival was necessary. Regardless of when they did marry within the following few months, they were not scheduled to take their true honeymoon until December, and they would be traveling to one of the few places on the planet where they could be guaranteed some modicum of privacy from the glaring eyes of the media:  Antarctica.  Sherlock had booked passage on the National Geographic science cruise ship, Orion.  The ship would retrace some of the routes of his favorite explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton, who led an infamous voyage on his ship, Endurance, from 1914-16.  Endurance had been the first text code word that Sherlock and Molly had shared. Sherlock had copies of all of Shackleton’s books and was incredibly well-versed on his life.  He hoped to visit Shackleton’s grave on South Georgia Island when the ship made a stop there.  It had been a dream of his to visit Antarctica, and a honeymoon gave him the perfect excuse to do so.  Maybe he would even pen his own biographical account of Shackleton. Molly thought the cruise sounded like a wonderful adventure although the historical part of Sherlock’s enthusiasm held little interest to her although she was glad for him to see a dream fulfilled.

The wedding would be an ultra private affair at his parents’ home with only immediate family and a few close friends in attendance.  Social media was already trending #Sherlockwedding, and Sherlock’s ability to conduct investigations in any public place was a bit hampered with the attention.  His only relief was when he was working with Lestrade, and other officers provided interference between Sherlock and nosy onlookers or media.  He had became a bit more acerbic in public.  Even some of his cutting personal deductions became fodder for Twitter and Tumblr.  Mycroft suggested more than once that Sherlock demonstrate a little restraint, but that was one of the major differences between the Holmes boys:  one spoke with eloquent diplomacy, and the other spoke his mind and always had no matter the consequences.

The workmen arrived the following morning at 0800, and Sherlock stumbled about his flat in his pyjamas and blue dressing gown, suddenly beside himself with a broken routine:  Mrs. Hudson wasn’t there to bring him his morning tea.  He was perfectly capable of making a proper tea, but he was used to her doing it.  It also interrupted his morning violin practice.  Little to eat in the cupboard except a can of baked beans, that there were some eggs in the refrigerator that were a few days past their expiration.  He would order something to be delivered from Speedy’s and soon as the shop opened.

Sherlock winced at the banging and general construction that was occurring in all three 221 Baker Street flats.  All the plumbing was being redone starting with Mrs. Hudson’s apartment and 221C which Sherlock decided to rent and turn into a laboratory and private work space although he would never meet with clients there.  There was an issue with the damp in 221C, but he had professionals working on the mold problem as well as having air purifiers installed to keep himself healthy while down there.  The plumbers hadn’t started work on 221B yet.  

John’s old room didn’t need much work although the plumbing was being redone in the small bathroom there as well.  The plumbing had always been a bit of a problem which no amount of servicing seemed to fix, and John had often used Sherlock’s bathroom for showers.   Hopefully the problem would be fixed permanently.  

John’s room also had a small fireplace.  As the building had been built in the early 1800’s, all the bedrooms and main rooms of the time had a fireplace, but since central heating had been installed in the 1950’s, the fireplace had gone mostly unused, and Sherlock simply had it screened off.  Rather than use the room for miscellaneous storage, which is what it been relegated to, he decided to turn it into a small study/library.  It was useless as a guest bedroom for his young niece since it wasn’t directly connected to the main apartment and but to the open hallway between floors, and that was not safe for a young child.  It was different when John lived there because John had a key to the main apartment and could come and go as he pleased, something a little child could not do, not to mention that 221B had an alarm system that would be out of her reach to set or unset.  In a way, the spare bedroom wasn’t even part of 221B.  It was more like 221D.  It had never bothered John, but then John lived a minimalist lifestyle.   

His parents suggested that when the niece would visit during the summers that he should purchase a lilo for her or even a small child’s play tent and set it up in the main room.  Then again, she could always sleep on the sofa.  The impending visits from the niece, however, were not his main reasons for the upgrades.  The upgrades were long overdue but also, what he had been willing to endure as a bachelor was inappropriate for the one he intended to share his life with.

Sherlock’s condition with Mrs. Hudson over the upgrades which were coming out of his own pocket, was that she would not raise his rent for at least ten years, especially since he would now be renting 221C, and that the rent for 221C would go for only 50% of her asking price for the same time frame as it had brought her no income at all since even before Sherlock had initially moved into 221B. Mycroft thought the entire idea to be a waste of finances since Sherlock had no ownership in the building, but as Sherlock had no intention of moving for the foreseeable future, he felt that was his home and he was, therefore, willing to invest in it.  

Because he was always concerned with personal security and privacy, he had asked Mycroft to recommend appropriate plumbers, construction crew, painters, and anyone else he needed to complete the task, and Mycroft begrudgingly complied with a list of government contractors.  The entire remodeling project would end up taking the majority of the summer.  Everything was brought to code, including adding anti-slip runners on the stairs.  Mrs. Hudson had slipped one morning and dropped the entire tray of tea and biscuits which necessitated a trip to hospital to x-ray her swollen ankle.  It was only sprained, however, although the tea set was broken beyond repair.

For the moment, however, the noise was grating and he had work to do.  He put his ear buds in his ear and turned up the volume as he tried to quiet his mind while listening to the complete nocturnes of Chopin.  He rated piano and violin equal in soothing his spirit.  

Sherlock took down his skull painting and gently set it on the floor, then took out his measuring tape and measured the wall behind the sofa. He had a heavy 3’ wide roll of white paper, and rolled it across the floor , measured out two lengths the same as his wall then tacked the two pieces over the wallpaper above the sofa creating a large blank canvas of sorts.  Once it was firmly in place, he stepped back to get a good look at it.  It was blank.  Very blank, but he liked it and thought he should have always done things this way whenever he took on a major case that had a lot of variables.  Since he didn’t have a proper office, he needed the wall to work out his ideas.  Mrs. Hudson had already complained about the damage he’d done to her wallpaper, and he didn’t know how he could make it any worse since he knew he’d be liable to replace it someday anyhow.  Perhaps he would simply redo the whole wall in corkboard.  For now, however, he needed a large space to write out his calculations, theories and chemical assessments and to visually see how things worked together.

He had not pursued maths beyond the required courses at university, but he had been a stellar student regardless, and he would need to revisit some of his maths to help him in this mystery.  His abilities weren’t all about powers of observation.  Most of solving a case was in the puzzle solving, and that didn’t happen instantly.  This particular venture would take a long time as he also had an enormous mountain of research to sift through.

He divided the papers into three columns with a large black marker.  At the top of the first column he wrote “Irrefutable Truths.”  The second column was titled “Theoretical Truths,” and the third column was titled “Lies.”  He pocketed the fat marker and pulled out a smaller tipped marker.  He wished he had a giant chalkboard, however, and he decided to have one of the walls in the sitting room of 221C painted in chalkboard paint so that he could use it for calculations.  

He wasn’t ready to write a single thing down on the papers simply because he wasn’t certain where to begin since his problem could be approached from countless angles, and try to fit them all onto the sheets at the same time would prove too confusing.  Even as he stared at the vastness of his future work, he had no idea that the statements he wrote in one column would invariably jump to another and that soon it would all be filled with crossed-out lines.  He stood motionless for nearly thirty minutes when pen poised to write.  Finally under “Irrefutable Truths” he wrote, “the Earth is round.”  He rolled his eyes at himself and crossed it off, even though it was true.  It was just too ridiculously true to be put up on the work space.  

He hadn’t had a decent case for weeks, “decent” meaning worthy of his skills.  He had solved many minor cases to keep the income flowing, but he was itching for something worthy of his talents like the Van Buren Supernova.  He still patted himself on the back for that one.   He had recently acquiesced to Mycroft and had done a little 10-day job for MI6 simply because he was the most qualified, and MI6 liked to keep him on their short list in special situations.  He didn’t like to be called an “agent” when on task with them but rather a “consulting agent,” but this was something that was never spoken of outside of MI6.  Of course, as soon as he had completed that assignment, MI6 had offered him another, but he had declined.  Once every couple of years was his tolerance limit, but he was under no compulsion to contribute his talents to them at all.

Even worse, it had been a few months since he had worked with John on a case although he was always looking for one they could do together.  The case he was mapping out on his wall wasn’t one he could ask John’s help with.  No, it was a personal matter, a case he had to solve by himself.  Even though he felt he knew the answers, he needed to re-evaluate and re-examine evidence.  Nevertheless he began to write down some of the basic laws of science under “Irrefutable Truth” starting with the laws of thermodynamics.    He quickly realized that his column needed to be bigger and that he needed to write smaller.

Despite his “consulting detective” self-title, he was at heart a scientist.  He loved all the sciences but favored those that required use of a microscope.  He sorted away countless facts in forensics, biology, zoology, botany, archeology, astronomy, paleontology and even a little astrophysics on the side round it all out.  He also had a fair amount of psychology and medical knowledge and could wield a scalpel with exacting precision when required although he had never entertained becoming a physician.  That would have required caring about people, and in general he did not.  Or so he said.  Certainly his bedside manner would have been appalling.

He took out a red marker and wrote his personal motto across all three columns:

WHEN YOU HAVE ELIMINATED THE IMPOSSIBLE, WHATEVER REMAINS, HOWEVER IMPROBABLE, MUST BE THE TRUTH.

The motto served him well for the most part, but once in a while he missed something simply because he failed to eliminate all the impossible elements.  His deductions were very nearly perfect but slightly imperfect at times.  It was an annoyance he never quite got used to.

A sharp rap on the back of his head startled him and he turned around quickly to find himself confronting a slightly annoyed John.  He removed his ear buds.  “What the hell was that for?”

“Because I’ve been bloody calling your name, and you either can’t hear me or you’re ignoring me.” John groused.

“You could have simply moved into my line of vision.” Sherlock snapped.

“Actually really wanted to have a good whack at you.” John said. “Long overdue.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes and stepped off the couch, onto the coffee table and then down to the floor as he headed towards the kitchen.  “I see nothing has changed.”

Sherlock put his kettle under the tap, but there was no water since the water for the building had been turned off while the pipes were being replaced.  He groaned but then grabbed a 2-litre bottle of water and filled the kettle.

“How much longer until all this reconstruction is completed?” John asked.  

“Plumbing should be done by the end of the week, or so they say.  Can’t leave the premises while they’re here as Mrs. Hudson is away for a few days while hers is being done.  Someone has to be the supervisor, but I feel like a prisoner.”

“Well, you are paying for it, so you should supervise it.”

“Yes, but it’s boring.”

He set the kettle to boil but suddenly the lights went out.  It was daytime, so they weren’t plunged into complete darkness, but things suddenly got very quiet.  One of the workers from somewhere called out, “Sorry!”  Within moments the power was back on.

“So what’s that on the wall?  Our new case?”

“Yes and no.  More of a personal project.  I don’t think much will come of it, but I’ll give it a fair go.”

“You said on the phone that there were some possible murders.”

“Possible being the operative word, but we’ve been hired regardless.”

“You said the possible victims have been dead for some time.  We’re not going to have to exhume bodies, are we?”

“Highly unlikely.  I don’t actually think there’s much to this case, but we shall see.”

The kettle boiled after a few minutes, and he made tea for them.  John sat back in his old chair. “End of an era for you, isn’t it?” John asked.

Sherlock sat back in his chair.  “I prefer to think of it as a new episode of a continuing narrative.”

“Any idea for an actual date yet?” he asked. “Mary and I would like to make other plans.”

“Plans for what?”

“Plans for anything, Sherlock.  Set the bloody date.”

“It’s not happening this month, John.”    

“I’ll book our holiday to Caribbean then.” John said

“You’re going to the Caribbean?” Sherlock’s brow furrowed.

“No, but thank you for letting me know we can get on with our lives this month without said event.  I thought you were anxious to get married after your recent covert assignment for Mycroft.”

Sherlock sipped his tea and then set his cup and saucer aside. “Anxious implies restless, worried, or apprehensive which I am not.  It’s simply a matter of timing.  Obviously I can’t do it until all of this work is completed, but I do promise it will happen no later than early December, so please keep your schedule free.”  

There was a loud bang of equipment from somewhere, and it was following by the sound of something shattering, and Sherlock immediately sprang up from his chair and dashed out of the flat.  John could hear him bounding down the stairs, and it was followed by much yelling and cursing from Sherlock.  Although John couldn’t make out the exact words, they were words Sherlock generally only used when he was betrayed by his stress levels.  Of all the things Sherlock was, he was not casual about using profanity unlike John who seemed to toss it in every other sentence and never think about it.  He returned after a couple of minutes.

“What did they break?” John asked.

“That teapot you got her for Christmas.  No great loss, actually.  It was atrocious.”

“It was nineteenth century bone china!” John exclaimed.

“Even she hated it.  Now you can get her a different one.  The charity shops are full of them.”

John scowled a bit.  “Let’s just get back to the case.”

Sherlock discussed at length and detail what he felt the case entailed, and John listened in disbelief at first and finally interjected, “Look, Sherlock, I know you feel you have an obligation to your brother, God rest his soul, but this case sounds a little desperate.”

“I suppose you’re right.  It might be over your head.” Sherlock said, and he steepled his hands beneath his chin and stared hard at John.  Sometimes John needed a little insult for motivation when he couldn’t see the merits of a case.  It was a trick Sherlock had used many times, and it usually worked.

John was fully aware of Sherlock’s psychological manipulation, and he stared back with his steely, soldier’s glare. He leaned forward in his chair.  “When do we start?”

 

**  
**


	2. Chapter 2

The black government car was waiting outside of Barts for Molly.  This was not an entirely unusual arrangement since her engagement with Sherlock had become public  information, and she was often escorted to and from home.  What was unusual about this occasion, however, was that Mycroft was waiting for her in the car.  As she slid into the back seat next to him, the window between the front and back of the car went up and left them in privacy.  “You’re not kidnapping me again, are you?” she asked.   

“I promise not.” He said simply.

It had been several weeks since she had been unceremoniously whisked from London to the safety and privacy of his parents’ home in the Devonshire countryside  while Sherlock performed a short mission for MI6, one for which he had been uniquely qualified.   

“I trust you had a pleasant day.” Mycroft said.

“Don’t be diplomatic.  What do you want, Mycroft?” she asked.

“Please turn off your phone.” Mycroft insisted.  “I know he tracks you.”

“We track each other.” She said.

“Or you think you do.  Trust me, if Sherlock doesn’t want to be found, you won’t find him. You will just believe you know where he is.” Mycroft said.  “But no matter.  That’s not why I’m here.  Phone off, please.”

And then she realized.  “Because he tracks your phone too, and he would see us together.”

Mycroft smiled a little.  He ranked her a little higher than a goldfish but not much.

Molly turned off her phone.  “Are you sending him on another mission?” she asked. “Is that what this is about?”

“No.” Mycroft said.  “It’s about your wedding.”

“My wedding?”

“Miss Hooper –Molly, surely you know how much I worry about my younger brother.” He said.  “My brother is not like other men.  You treat him as if he is because that’s what you want him to be.  Oh, he puts on a good mask of pretense when he’s trying for you, but I worry that it’s destroying him.”

“What?” His words struck her like a shard of ice.  They came from far afield.  Never in all the months that she and Sherlock had been engaged had Mycroft ever voiced one word of disapproval or displeasure with the idea.  On the contrary.  He had seen to it that they were both as protected under the government’s umbrella as they possibly could be.  She was unsure what to say.  His words were painful, like blows to the gut, and she was reeling in shock. “He loves me, Mycroft.  He’s not pretending.”

“Isn’t he? I don’t say it to be mean.  I say it to spare you.  I’m certain he is doing his best to imitate what he thinks romantic love is.  In fact, I am certain he has given it his paramount attention and effort, but surely you know that it is doomed to failure in the end.”

She thought for a moment she was having a nightmare, but if so it would be a lucid dream, and she had never had a lucid dream before.  Even so, time seemed to have stopped, and nothing seemed right to her.  “No, I don’t know that.” She said firmly. “You don’t know him like I know him.”  

Mycroft was trying to be gentle.  “It’s been almost twelve months since his last turn in rehab.  Do you really think he’s been clean all that time?”

She did believe he had been clean the entire time, but now she was afraid to say it for fear he’d contradict her.

“These excursions into drugs will continue to happen, Molly.  That part of my brother I know better than you do.  He will justify their use as he has always done, and that is the bleak future you have to look forward to.  A future of mistrust.  A future of being vigilant for places he may be hiding his new stash.  A future of never knowing if he is telling you a lie or the truth.  You think marrying him will make him stay clean?  You think having his child will keep him sober? You think your love is strong enough to cure him? You think you can be enough of a distraction to him to keep him from being bored?  It will never work.  He is an addict, and he knows how to lay a carpet of lies for you to walk on unawares, and when he pulls the proverbial carpet from beneath you, you will fall and be hurt.”

“Why are you saying all of this now? Why not months ago?”

“I honestly never thought he’d go this far with your relationship.  I should have intervened earlier, but I thought he would get his fix of that lifestyle and move on.”

“Don’t call what we have a fix.” She said.  “Don’t you dare put doubt in my mind.  Don’t you dare!”

“But it is a fix, my dear.   Hasn’t it always been?  A woman who pined for years in unreciprocated love for an unattainable man, and a man who was strung-out on a case who thought that initiating sexual intimacy would take that loneliness away?  You each got your fix.  Not really the solid ground for a lasting relationship, especially when one of you is an addict.”

“This is really none of your business.” She said sharply.

“There isn’t a white picket-fenced cottage of happiness for you, Molly, not even Sparrow’s Nest. He will wear you down, and you will end up hating him, and I would loath to see that happen for either of you.” He took a deep breath.  There was a true sadness to his voice.  “You can’t save him by marrying him.  He will destroy both of you.”

“You bastard.  Stop the car!” She said, and she beat on the glass.  “Stop the car!”  

“Molly, no matter what you decide, I will support you.  I will always be there for both of you.  I will do whatever I can.”

“Go to hell, Mycroft Holmes.” She nearly spat at him as the car pulled over.  She opened her door and got out, angry tears running down her face.

She started to cross the street, stepping out into the evening’s rush hour traffic, not paying attention, not seeing the city bus as it bore down on her, horn blaring.  Too late.

Sherlock gasped and startled awake after having only been asleep for an hour.  He turned quickly in bed to check for Molly but she wasn’t there.  She hadn’t spent the night.  He groaned and sank back into his pillows, then grabbed up his cell phone and texted.

YOU OK? SH

He had to wait about thirty seconds for a response, and he thought they were the longest thirty seconds of his life.

I WAS ASLEEP. THIS HAD BETTER BE GOOD. MH

BORED. SH

That wasn’t the truth but he wasn’t about to divulge that he’d had a nightmare and was simply checking on her.

YOU WOKE ME TO TELL ME THAT? NO SYMPATHY. NITE.  XO MH

He was thankful later when Mary Watson  clamored up the stairs with a bag of groceries hanging off each arm.  He had asked if she would mind performing the small shopping errand for him as he was nearly out of everything.  She had called him “pitiful,” but had agreed to do it anyhow.   _Pitiful indeed_.

He breathed a sigh of relief to see her, but he was always glad to see her, and he practically leapt out of his chair to relieve her of the groceries.  As he began to unload them, she walked down his hallway to check on the work being done in the bathroom.   She returned after a few moments.  “Wow.  That’s a change.”

“You don’t like it?” he wrinkled his nose a bit at her comment.

“Oh no, it’s great.  Just a lot of change for a man who doesn’t like a lot of change.”

“Scintillating observation, Mary.” He said dryly as he continued to unload the sack. Bread, jam, butter, milk, eggs, coffee, cheese, crisps, and cans of beans.  Hardly a balanced diet, but he wasn’t known for eating healthily, and this at least was something.

She dug the receipt out of her purse and laid it on the table.  It wasn’t until he put the last item away, however, before he said carefully, “This isn’t entirely about doing me a favor, is it?”

“Was I that obvious?” she asked.

“You didn’t bring the baby.” He said.  “You want to talk and not be interrupted by her needs.  Also these are John’s busiest hours at the office, so you have little to no fear of being interrupted with so much as a text message.”

“You did ask me once why I didn’t come to you as a client when I was in trouble.”

“And are you in trouble now?” he asked.  All his senses were instantly on alert, and he instinctively put the kettle on.  Cases involving friends or family were better served with tea.

“I need to talk to you in confidence, Sherlock, and not have anything I say to you get back to John.  If you can’t do that, then this was nothing more than me just being neighborly, and we’ll leave it at that.”

“In confidence implies that you are either protecting John or you are keeping an illicit activity from him.  I favor the former.  Let me guess.  Someone from your past wants you to do one more hit job or they will expose you.  How pastiche.”  He motioned to John’s old chair.  “Have a seat, Mary.”

“Not in the client chair?”

His countenance softened and he said, “When I asked you before why you didn’t come to me, it wasn’t as a client.  It was as a friend, and a friend sits in John’s chair.”

Always chipper and a bit sassy, Mary’s eyes suddenly filled with tears, and Sherlock didn’t know her to fake emotions the way he could.  Even so, his guard went up.  He’d been taken in by her charm before only to end up getting shot and nearly killed by her.  Although he had forgiven her, he retained an edge of mistrust.  He didn’t know if she would ever entirely earn his trust again.  Trust and forgiveness were separate issues.  Somehow he still loved her as a friend, but he sometimes wondered if that was only true because she was married to his best friend.  Even so, there was something likeable and genuine about her even if she had been a liar.  He had initially been so taken by her easy-going nature and affection for John that he had allowed himself to be lulled into a false sense of security and friendship and had dismissed the warning signs.  Now he tried to be more aware.

She seemed to have become more open once her past had been so unceremoniously revealed, although John had consciously decided to remain blind to her true identity.  Sherlock was not as blind, and Mycroft was fully aware of who she was after Magnussen’s death, but Mycroft did not consider her a current threat and in fact consulted with her on occasion.  Sherlock suspected that Mycroft knew Mary had shot him, but it never came up in conversation, and Sherlock wasn’t about to broach it.  Sometimes, however, when he would see Mary, his old wound would ache just a moment as if to remind him to never again let his guard down with her.

“I suppose that will be Molly’s chair soon.” Mary said.

“I’ll be moving it downstairs.  Molly’s reclining chair will take its place.” He said.  He suspected this was going to be awkward.  She wasn’t forthcoming.

She looked at the work on his wall. “What’s all this?”

“Personal project.  Might be a case.  Hard to tell at this point.”

“You could put up some corkboard, you know.  Save the wall.”

“I’ll soon be working downstairs, so it will scarcely matter.” He said.   The kettle whistled, he made the tea, and he brought the tray into the sitting room and set it on the small side table between them.

“Banished to the basement.”

“Hardly.” He said.  “221B needs to function in a different capacity now, and you are stalling.” He motioned to John’s chair, and she finally sat down.  He poured out her tea for her and offered it to her.  “Does your constitution need bolstering for a moment or shall we begin?”

“You didn’t promise me.” She said.

“John is my best friend,” Sherlock said carefully.  “Don’t ask me to promise anything I would regret.  Need I remind you of what happened before?”

She had warned Sherlock in his morphine high post-operative state after she had shot him that he should not tell John, but as soon as he could he had taken the news to John in order to expose her and the lies within their friendships.

“I know.” She said.  “Fine.  Forget the promise. You decide whether or not you should go to John.”  She sipped her tea, then carefully set it aside.  “The thing is, Sherlock, I don’t know how much longer I can be Mary Morstan, because I don’t know who I am anymore.”  Huge tears spilled quickly down her cheeks, and she could not continue.

Had she been a true client, he would have found the display perfervid. He had been attempting to curb his natural reticence towards emotion, even catching himself when with Molly, but Molly had softened his sharp edges a bit.  This, however, was Mary, for whom he had genuinely deep affection despite their history.  He laid his hand on her knee and leaned forward slightly.  “You are John’s wife.  You are Elizabeth’s mother.  You are a skilled nurse.  Let’s start with that, shall we?”

The amateur psychologist kicked in a bit as he began to listen to her story, but he also knew that she needed professional help that he could not offer.  Even so, he listened to her for nearly an hour and refreshed her tea twice.    Before changing her identity to Mary Morstan, she had never seen herself as one who would marry or have children.  She had never desired either partly due to the nature of her work and that emotional attachments with men previously had been little more than play acting to get information she needed.  Living a life of lies did not lend itself to honest relationships.

“Now you see why I can’t talk to John.  Who I was, what I was… will always be the elephant in the room.  We both try to pretend it isn’t there, but it is.”

“You already knew you were pregnant at your wedding, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” She admitted. “But you blew my cover, thank you very much, and I had to pretend I was just as surprised as John.  Otherwise I had planned to abort it.  Once John knew and was so happy, I couldn’t do that to him, but the mantle of motherhood does not fit comfortably on my shoulders.  I am failing John and Lizzie, Sherlock.”  It obviously pained her to admit it, and huge tears filled her eyes again.  “I don’t know what to do.”

“And if you had the opportunity to walk away from all of it with no questions asked and no consequences, would you?”

“Don’t ask me that.” She said as new tears filled her eyes.

“It demands a true and honest answer.” He said.

“I love John. I do, Sherlock.  And I love Lizzie.  That’s what’s so hard about all of this.”

He set his own tea aside and leaned forward a bit. “I’m hardly qualified to offer you marriage or parenting advice.  I can only offer you friend advice.  Don’t make any sudden decisions based on your current emotions which, forgive me, I suspect are partially fueled by a surge of monthly hormones.  Am I correct?”

She glared at him a bit, but he was right.  “I’m not leaving John or Lizzie, if that’s what you’re after.  I couldn’t do that to him, not after what he’s been through with you. He was suicidal when I met him.”

Sherlocked scowled.  “Yes, back to this not being about me but about you, Mary.  What is it that you need?  To work for MI5 or MI6?  You need some human target practice to keep your skills polished?”

That struck hard.  “Well, I see this has all been a mistake to come to you.” she said.  She stood up and gathered up her purse, and she headed towards the door.

He stood up then and went to his desk, rifled through a stack of papers before digging out a wooden box.  “Just one more question, Mary.  Was John one of your marks and you made the fatal mistake of falling in love with him?  Were you going to kill him at the swimming pool or when I was on the roof of Barts?”

She stopped, and her body language immediately gave him his answer.  She turned to face him.

“There were rumors that you weren’t really dead.  Mostly fanatical theories.  It was believed that John was keeping your faked death a secret, but it turns out his grief was real. “

He opened the box on his desk and pulled out a small handgun and aimed it at her.  “Oh Mrs. Watson.  Wrong answer.”

He fired.

Sherlock startled himself awake again.  Still in his bed.  Again dreaming.  There was no tea. There was no Mary.  There was no gun.  His heart was racing and his hands trembled as he reached for his bedside clock and squinted at the time. 0538.  He growled loudly in frustration.  His stomach scar gave him a pain, and he pressed his arm tightly to it.  He knew what was happening.  He had experienced these types of nightmare before, but only for one reason:  the sleeping monster within was waking and wanted to be fed.  His amygdala was sending drug craving issues through his body, an echo of withdrawal even though it had been nearly twelve months that he had been drug free.  What he would have given at that moment to have just one more hit of cocaine to satiate the craving he suddenly felt.  He suspected the stress and boredom were making his cravings worse, but he was quite worried that a full relapse was in the making if he didn’t get completely clean.

Mrs. Hudson and John never did know all of his drug hiding places in the flat.  It would take a drug-sniffing dog to find them all.  He still had cocaine.  He only needed a screwdriver to remove the switchplate in the wall and access the stash there. He also had heroin, morphine and oxycontin.  He knew where some of it was hidden but he had purposefully forgotten where it all was.  He wasn’t certain why he still kept some hidden, but he knew that keeping it meant that he wasn’t totally clean either.  He was living a lie, and if that part of his life was a lie, how much else was a lie?  To expose his lie would be to make himself vulnerable, and if he was going to take that route, he didn’t know who to reveal it to or how to go about it.  Who would he disappoint?  Who would he alienate?  He couldn’t afford to alienate the one who mattered the most, especially with a looming wedding.  Even so, it wasn’t the foundation of trust he wanted to establish with her.  Revealing the secret might cause everything to begin to unravel, and he was not willing for that to happen.

Contrary to what he had once told Mycroft, he hadn’t been just a “user,” and certainly Mycroft had never believed the words anyhow.  Sherlock couldn’t simply walk away from his drug usage and burn the bridge.  Despite a previous time in rehab, he had yet to come to terms with his addiction and on occasion still experienced cravings.  That’s what was causing his nightmares.  The cravings seemed to surface every few months, and he had so far managed to rise above them, but this time seemed more intense, perhaps magnified by being pent up in the flat.

He realized he could remove all the hidden drugs and no one would be the wiser, but he wondered if he had the strength to do it.  He certainly did not have the courage to confess it to Molly at that moment.  If he had hidden that secret from her all these months, it would make her constantly question what else he was hiding or if he was ever telling the truth.  He reasoned that as soon as possible he would attend a meeting.  He might find a sympathetic ear with the meeting facilitator who could properly advise him on his next step.

He had been housebound for four days since his return from Cambridge, not even venturing out in the evenings, and he desperately needed a physical recharge as well as a mental one.  He put on his sweats and a cap, laced up his trainers, and he was out the door for a morning run before the workmen arrived.  Sometimes running did help him to think, especially if he was able to run for long enough.  Regent’s Park was very close and provided plenty of paths for jogging, and he made three circuits of his normal route as he allowed his mind to disengage from his body and to work on the puzzle of the Durbin case.  His breathing fell into a regular pattern and his heart rate climbed and settled into a rhythm.  He eyes remained focused on the path well ahead, but his thoughts were far from it.  He didn’t hear the sound of his trainers hitting the ground nor the early songbirds or traffic.

Three scholars dead, possibly four if Sherlock counted his half-brother Ford Holmes who had died only a few months before.  He didn’t count Ford, however.  Sherlock was not a man to believe in coincidences, but Ford’s death was as close as he would get to saying the word.  All of the scholars were from different academic fields, but there didn’t seem to be anything particularly noteworthy with any of the deaths.  One had died in his sleep of apparently natural causes, one had died in a car accident on an icy road in a multi-car pile-up, and one had died from surgical complications.  Except for the one who had died in the car accident, the police were not even involved.  In fact, in the case of the car accident, the vehicle containing the scholar was not the cause of the accident as the pile-up had already begun when it joined the fray.  There were no real investigations into any of them and rightfully so.  Even so, Sherlock wondered why an esteemed maths professor from Cambridge would be willing to suggest a conspiracy theory and go to the trouble to hire him for something so unredeemingly illogical?   The only thing he could find remotely connecting the men just off the scantiest evidence was that all three men and also his half brother were scholars or scientists of some sort.  That alone meant nothing.  They weren’t even in related fields.

He found himself annoyed with a case that should not have ever come to his attention in the first place although he recognized that his irritation was also being encouraged by the work being done at the 221 Baker Street flats.  He felt imprisoned by the upgrades he had planned.  It wasn’t quite as bad as the week of solitary confinement he had experienced after shooting Charles Augustus Magnussen, but he ranked it a close second.  The noise, the banging, the clatter, the decisions that had to be made.  

He returned to Baker Street with a half hour to spare before the workmen were scheduled to arrive, and he bounded up the stairs to his flat.  Now he really needed a shower and shave, but he would have to give himself a bit of a sponge bath and wash his hair in the kitchen sink, and he’d have to be quick about it.

The workmen arrived exactly on time, and the custom-made fiberglass shower stall/bathtub was laboriously and awkwardly moved up the narrow stairs.   Because it could not be loaded through the hallway door in 221B, Sherlock’s bedroom had to be invaded, his bed moved slightly over, and he grated at the disruption of his very personal space, even though he knew it was necessary. The new lavatory and toilet would be installed in the afternoon, and the bathroom would be completely retiled on the following day; that is, if everything went on schedule.  That is, if he could get the monster to sleep again.

Although he had been eager to marry on the heels of his recent MI6 mission for Mycroft, he knew needed to back away from setting a date so quickly until this private issue was more under control, and he needed to simply come completely clean and deal with the consequences and potential fallout. At the moment, however, the beast within him was stirring awake, and he needed to feed it something to divert it.  Caffeine and sugar could give him a pale semblance of a drug high, and the beast would be temporarily sated.  

He was expecting Mrs. Hudson to return the following day since the work on her place had now been completed.  While he largely found her chatter annoying, he nevertheless felt something was out of place in his world when she wasn’t there.  He depended on a modicum of order in his OCD world, and she had become part of that.

He didn’t know if the pain in his side was psychological, scar tissue, or nerves still trying to reconnect or perhaps a combination of all three.  The external scar had some localized numbness that had not improved in the two years since the surgery, and he began to doubt it ever would.  Thankfully the pain was only an occasional bother, but stress seemed to aggravate it, and the current disruption of his life was extremely stressful.  He made himself a hot water bottle, wrapped it in a dish towel, and tucked it up under his t-shirt and held it in place with his arm.    Strong coffee with extra sugar, some biscuits, and 800 mg of ibuprofen, and he settled back in his chair.

He heard footsteps on the stairs.  He knew the sound of those footsteps, and he pinched himself hard to make certain he wasn’t dreaming again, but he instantly regretted it as he’d now given himself a bruise.  He never bruised in dreams.  He discreetly removed the water bottle and tucked it under the chair.

John entered then carrying a boxful of books , and he set it down on the coffee table.  “Hottest day of the year and I’m moving boxes of books for you.  This isn’t going to be like Chinese cipher case, is it?” John asked.

Sherlock immediately fetched him a cold bottle of water. “Didn’t you call that case  _The Blind Banker_?” he asked.  “I never liked that title.”

“Well, when you start blogging your own bloody cases, you can call them what you want.” John said.  “So what do you want with all these old textbooks for?”

“It’s where we begin, John.”

“Begin what?”

“Looking at the details, separating fact from fiction.  Trying to find the fraud.”

“I’m still not entirely certain what you’re hoping to find.” John said. “Generally once a scientific textbook or any textbook for that matter is published, it is already considered out of date.  Even medical journals can be wildly inaccurate from publication to the next.”

“But a scientific fact is a scientific fact.”

“Until something trumps it or disproves it.” John said, and Sherlock reluctantly nodded in agreement.  It was at that moment that John took a second look at Sherlock.  “You all right?  You look a little peaked.”

“I’m fine.  Just fine.  Just haven’t slept well since all this began.”  He waved his hands manically indicating the remodeling.

“You’re not having second thoughts, are you? You know, about changing so many things around.”

“Has to be done.  How are things between you and Mary?” he asked.

John shrugged.  “Good.  She’s a bit happier now that she’s only working in the office part-time, although the patients miss her a bit.  I think she may be wanting to transition to being home all the time.  We’ve been talking about a sibling for Elizabeth, but right now it’s just talk.”

To hear John say the words was the normal life he knew.  It didn’t feel like dreaming, and it didn’t sound like dreaming, and he was relieved.  “I’ll hold off on my congratulations, then.”

It was at that moment that two workmen came out of the bathroom with the old pedestal sink, a throwback to the 1930s. “I’m surprised Mrs. Hudson let you get rid of it.” John said.  “I thought it came with the flat. Historical decor.”  

“It was a bit of an argument, but I prevailed.  Bought her a new kitchen sink tap that you just touch and it comes on.  She was thrilled.” Sherlock insisted.  “Out with the old, in with the new.  Isn’t that what they say?”

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?” John asked.

Sherlock and John stared at each other in silence for a moment, neither willing to budge in further response.  John believed that somehow  Sherlock was actually stalling with his wedding plans and that all the reconstruction at 221 Baker Street was part of that stall, but Sherlock didn’t share that opinion.  Obviously all the work had to be done to make the place habitable for two, although he was still unsure where to put the damned cat’s litter box.  He was not really a cat person although he tolerated Molly’s feline.

“I don’t need convincing, John.  Just a bit perplexed with myself for taking so long to come to that conclusion.  Ah, food!”

A delivery boy from Speedy’s walked up to the open door then.  Sherlock paid him with cash and a generous tip and unpacked his meal at the kitchen table.  “I ordered enough for two, John.  Since Mrs. Hudson’s not here, I’m practically starving.”

“When does she get back?”  

“Tomorrow.  Can’t come soon enough.  I’ve already made a shopping list.” Sherlock said as he sat down at the table.  John took up his place on the other side.  

The conversation between the two former flatmates settled into its old, comfortable routine where neither said much of anything at all.  No deep, man-to-man discussions.  John commented on how much he liked his sandwich, and Sherlock also liked his.  John discussed the latest news a bit, and Sherlock groaned at the lack of any decent crimes to solve. No serial murderers on the prowl, no high-tech cat burglars.  Lots of politically and racially charged tensions in London’s great melting pot, but those held little interest to him.  

“Interesting crime is so much more difficult to accomplish now that security cameras are everywhere.  The crimes are all boring.  No mastermind criminals.  I miss the Moriarty days sometimes.” Sherlock mused.  “Solved half a dozen boring ones from my computer this morning.  That should cover the rent for the month.”

Once the new sink and toilet were installed, the foreman on the job remarked to Sherlock that his men were done for the day but that they would be back the following morning to put in the tile.  In the meantime, the plumbing was working fine and he was free to use any of the facilities in the bathroom.  That said, the men left, and Sherlock excused himself for a shower.  He was pleased with all the improvements, and was anxious to show them off to Molly.  She had picked out the shower unit, but he had picked out the tile colors - blues and greens on a canvas of white.

Lestrade had a packet of information on the dead professors sent over, and Sherlock and John sorted through the information.  Again, nothing was amiss, certainly nothing worthy of exhuming bodies for the inglorious task of a possible re-examination of the dead.  Why Scotland Yard would have information on any of the men was slightly puzzling.  Except that all the men were scholars, he couldn’t find a true connection.  

His cell phone beeped with a text message from Professor Durbin.  

HOPE THIS HELPS. D

Durbin texted an image of a small lapel pin.  It was the image of an angel with wings fully spread and arching above the head.  The angel was lifting a book as if to the heavens.  Encircling the angel were the words,  _Doctor Angelicus_.  He understood the Latin but not the reason for being sent the image.

I DON’T UNDERSTAND.  SH

SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS.  PATRON SAINT OF SCHOLARS.  GOOD LUCK IN YOUR RESEARCH.  D

Sherlock showed John the image.  “Ever seen this before?”

“No, why should I?”

“You spent some formative years in Catholic education.”

“So I’m supposed to know all Catholic religious iconography?” John asked.

“Was worth a try.”  Sherlock took another look at it.  Something about it seemed familiar.  He was nearly certain he had seen it before but couldn’t place where.  Perhaps he’d caught a glimpse of it on Durbin, although he found it odd that an Atheist professor would wear a pin of a being he didn’t believe in.  Might as well have been a unicorn.  “At least he didn’t send me an actual one and expect me to wear it like a lucky charm.”

“I wore my St. Michael the Archangel medal in Afghanistan.” John said. “Patron saint of soldiers and the military.”

“You didn’t actually believe it had magical powers, did you?” Sherlock asked.

John didn’t, but he couldn’t help saying, “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“And a lot of soldiers aren’t.” Sherlock said.  “Lots have been buried with their medals intact.  You know that.”

“Well, you’re a bit out of sorts.”  John groused.  He never liked it when Sherlock made light of military service, even if John didn’t particularly hold onto any of his Catholic background.  “And ease up on the sugar before you give yourself diabetes or pancreatitis.”

John had forgotten the times when living with Sherlock that Sherlock had over-indulged in sugar.  He had never connected the excess as a substitute for drugs, and Sherlock hid a lot of his sweet habit anyhow.  Mrs. Hudson would scold Sherlock for his indulgences, and sometimes she purposefully “forgot” to get something but would manage to substitute a healthier option.  

The workers came back promptly the next morning and began the work for laying the tile.   When they were finished with the last of the grout by just after lunch, they packed up again.  Sherlock inspected their work and was genuinely pleased with the very modern update.

He changed his clothes and was nearly out the door when Mrs. Hudson arrived with a large suitcase in tow.  He gave her a quick kiss on each cheek, helped her with the suitcase, and bounded out the front door where he hailed a taxi.  He went straight away to the London Museum of Natural History.  It was one of his favorite places to visit as far as museums went, but he hadn’t been for many months.

His interest at the museum was two-fold: to look for possible scientific fraud not only to verify Durbin’s claims but also to look at what was being presented with what his brother Ford had claimed.  The question and trouble was where to begin.  Was he to question absolutely everything?  Was there nothing he could consider concrete fact?  He and his brother had entirely different scientific interests, and Sherlock felt a bit overwhelmed, as if all areas of science suddenly demanded re-examination.  He had neither the inclination nor desire to extend his credentials that far simply to satisfy his brother’s last wish.  Thankfully, his brother and Professor Durbin had given him a few jumping off points for research, and his first was “transitional fossils.”  

As a child he had loved looking at the dinosaur fossils.  He had been fascinated with dinosaurs and could name them all by the time he was four years old.  He had loved any movies about them and announced to his parents when he was eight years old that he was going to build a time machine so that he could go visit the dinosaurs.  His time machine had been little more than a large cardboard box where he took all his plastic dinosaurs and played with them.

Dippy the Diplodocus still greeted him in the main hall although the exhibit was due to be replaced by a blue whale skeleton in the next couple of years.  Dippy had greeted Sherlock since his childhood, and Sherlock smiled a little to look up at it again.  “So, old friend, you’re looking well.”  Millions of years old, not that he could fathom a million years anyhow, but like the rest of the population, he pretended to.  Billions of years were even harder to grasp as reality, but he held onto the terms and ideas without question.

He spent three hours in the museum.  He listened, he got as close as he could to examine the displays.  He tried to distract himself while at the same time hoping to find a chink in the historical web laid out before him.  Instead he felt even more overwhelmed than when he’d entered the vast space.  He needed to focus on one single thing, to take it apart and put it back together again.  The museum had fossils, yes, but was weak on transitional fossils which may not have been transitional at all but simply a different species.  His brother’s words came back to him.  “There should be millions of transitional fossils.  Millions and millions.”  If Ford had been right, where were they?

Hunger drove him out of the museum.  He had eaten little that day, and the empty pit in his stomach was practically cramping to be fed, and he bought gyros from a food truck outside the museum, quickly wolfing it down, but the hunger didn’t entirely abate.  It wasn’t a hunger that could be satisfied with food.  He had been able to ignore it for a few hours, but it was calling him, taunting him, and he knew that going home would only make it worse.  Even so, that is exactly what he knew he needed to do.

He arrived back at 221B Baker Street, made himself some tea and even turned on the television for a bit, but the craving was growing stronger with each moment. He could swallow it down and even meditate it away for brief periods, but he would not survive the night without help.

Sherlock checked his watch as he paced his sitting room.  His heart was racing.  Even without going to a meeting and speaking with a facilitator, he knew what he had to do, but knowing what had to be done made it no easier to accomplish.  It was as if he was impaled by a serrated knife and needed it pulled out.  It would be a painful removal and likely cause more damage and pain, but its presence could not be tolerated.  He would disappoint and anger Mycroft and John, but his real concern was how it would affect his relationship with Molly.  There was a chance, perhaps a good chance, that she would have reached her tolerance level with him and call off the engagement.  Well, he would deserve that, he surmised, and he had no one to blame but himself.  Even so, he felt the pangs of despair at the thought of losing her.

His hand trembled  as he picked up his cell phone.  Real, gut-wrenching fear seized him, and he was not a man who easily succumbed to the emotional response of fear.  “Mycroft.”

“Yes, Sherlock.  What do you want?  It’s been a long day.” Mycroft said dryly.

Sherlock was half tempted to say something flippant and hang up.  He gave himself an extra moment and then said, “You’ll need to bring a dog.”  

There was a pause as Mycroft ran through the various possible scenarios, nearly instantly selecting the correct one.  “You know what has to be done, brother.” came the carefully anticipated words.

“Yes.  I’ll be here.” He ended the call and set his phone down.  He sank back into his chair and waited for his carefully constructed world to crumble into a ruinous heap.

 


	3. Chapter 3

The first to arrive were Mycroft, four agents and a drug-sniffing black labrador.  Sherlock had already placed a small cache of drugs on his coffee table from the hiding places that he remembered, but he had purposely forgotten a few places; hence the need for the dog’s services.  Mycroft didn’t understand how Sherlock could “purposefully forget,” but Sherlock insisted the memories were locked in a special vault in his mind palace and he had thrown away the key.  This particular search, however, was completely nauseating to him, and he felt as if he were about to crawl out of his own skin as they combed every inch, handling and moving his things.  There was not a single place that was untouched by them.

“Cue anticipation.” Mycroft said dryly.

“Yes.  I know what that means.” Sherlock said.

“Then why did you keep them?”

“To prove to myself that I was stronger than the temptation.” He said.  “And I have been.  I have been clean since my last sabbatical in rehab.  I have stared the devil in the face and won.”

“No, you kept them as a back-up.” Mycroft pursed his lips and shook his head slightly.  “Always with the excuses, Sherlock.  I expect those words from you.  Still the addict, just playing it from a different angle.”

“Says the man who hides bags of sweeties all over his house including his wall safe. Aren’t we all addicts of something? I am clean.”

“Yes, you keep saying that, but we both know it’s not true. That’s why you asked me to come here.  There’s a devil on your shoulder right now, Sherlock, whispering in your ear.” Mycroft looked at the wall behind Sherlock’s sofa.  “What is all that?”

“A case I’m working on. With John.”

“No wonder your cravings have surfaced.  It’s rubbish.  Get rid of it.”

When John and Molly arrived thirty minutes later, each carrying a medical kit, the humiliation only deepened.  “Has the bathroom been searched?” John asked Mycroft, and when Mycroft nodded, John turned to Sherlock.  “Well, Sherlock, you’re the one thing in this room that hasn’t been searched, and that unfortunate task falls to me.  And I’ll need a urine sample while we’re in there.  Let’s go.”

It was at that moment the dog sat down, indicating the presence of drugs.  Inside the hollow cavity of the bronze casting of an Irish setter was a small pouch of a half dozen oxycontin pills for which Sherlock did not have a legitimate prescription.  One of his forgotten places.   _Redbeard_.  Sherlock shook his head slightly and silently followed John into the bathroom.  As Molly and Mycroft waited in near silence, she nervously twisted the engagement ring on her finger.  She startled a little a few minutes later when she heard Sherlock’s muffled groan of discomfort.  It was followed by another, sharper groan, and Molly suspected that John wasn’t being entirely gentle.  When the bathroom door finally opened, Sherlock walked out but did not meet the gaze of anyone.  John walked out a moment later and snapped off his sterile gloves which he dropped into a waste bin in the sitting room.  

“Nothing.” He said to Molly and Mycroft as he handed a small jar with a urine sample to Molly.

Sherlock wanted to sit in his chair but an agent was searching it.  Cushions were removed, the chair was turned over and inspected.  The dog did not respond to it.  When it was set back in place, it wasn’t exactly in the right place, and Sherlock nudged its position slightly, then sat down in defeat.

Two agents had just finished the thorough ransack on the kitchen.   Molly took the urine sample into the kitchen, cleared a space on the center table, opened her med kit and removed the items necessary for the test.  She had a sinking feeling that it would test positive, and she was already prepared with her choice words of rebuke and disappointment, but when it did not test positive, she was not as relieved as she wanted to be.  That she had to do the test at all riled her. “He’s clean.” She said, but she glared at Sherlock nonetheless.  

“Yes.  As I already told you.” Sherlock said.

“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.” Mycroft said quietly.  

“Albert Einstein.” Sherlock said.  “But I have told the truth.  That’s why you’re here.  That’s why you’re all here.”

The dog sat down again, and Sherlock inwardly groaned.  A small stash of cocaine was found crammed into the toe of his Persian slipper.  It had been obscured by cigarettes that he no longer smoked but somehow kept also.  Sometimes he liked to smell the dried tobacco although the ones in the slipper had largely lost their scent.

He nearly put his hand down to the dog at one point but was sharply rebuked.  “Do not touch the dog, sir.”  He knew better, but he wasn’t thinking clearly.  There were too many people, too much noise.  He was on sensory overload.

“You want a list?”  Sherlock grabbed up a piece of blank paper and shoved it in Mycroft’s hand.  “Nothing.  Nothing!”

“You are dangerously close to a relapse now, brother.  I see the signs.  I daresay if I were to offer you a line of coke right now you’d be quick to burden your nasal cavities with it.”

Sherlock’s mouth twitched slightly as the visual memory of having done that very thing before swept through him.  His entire body wanted a hit, and his great mind could not block the craving.  They could all see his struggle.

Two agents and the sniffer dog came out of the bedroom.  They shook their heads, and Mycroft nodded his okay that they could be done there.  

Sherlock wanted to wake up, but this wasn’t a dream.  This was a living nightmare, perhaps even worse than he had ever anticipated.  The agents had gone through his personal things.  He felt violated and more than once had to swallow back the bile that threatened to burn a trail up his esophagus.  

“I’ve been clean.” Sherlock said.

“It’s been all of ten minutes since we found your last little bit, so I’ll credit you those ten minutes." Mycroft said.   The dog sat down again.  “Oopsie.  Start again.”

There was nothing to be done for Sherlock except to wait it out as he tried to filter the pejorative invective that scorched his ears.  He felt he had done his part and now just needed it to all be over, but he suspected it was only the beginning of some very difficult and painful times ahead.   

“I called you.  I confessed.  That should count for something.” Sherlock groused.

“Yes, that you’ve been lying.” John nearly snapped.  “How long have some of these drugs been hiding here, Sherlock?  Since I lived here?”

Sherlock thought about it for a moment, then shrugged.  “Maybe, possibly.”

“So you planted drugs for Mrs. Hudson and I to find in fake hiding places while all the time you had some really secret ones.”

“I am clean!” Sherlock insisted.

“Yeah, you keep saying that, but no one believes it.”

“I’m trying!” Sherlock bellowed.  

Molly had listened in silence, allowing the men to have their shouting match, but John finally asked, “Molly, is there anything you’d like to add?”

She chose her words carefully. “In fairness, we do have to give him credit for not having used drugs, that we know of, for the past twelve months and for coming clean about still possessing drugs. That took a lot of courage.” She said.

“Credit.  See?” Sherlock chimed.

“Stop it!” she snapped at him, and he immediately pursed his lips. “You don’t get to say anything more.  Not a word! Not one word.”

Mycroft and John both raised their brows at her command of Sherlock.  “Extraordinary.” Mycroft mused. She definitely wasn’t a goldfish.  Perhaps more like a lioness.

“He hasn’t entirely gone off course,” she continued, “but he needs to get back on track.  You can slap him on the wrists, have him arrested or the third option.”

“The third option?” John asked.

“Send him for a refresher course in rehab even if he hasn’t actually taken drugs.” She said.  When Sherlock started to protest she glared at him and reminded, “Did you misunderstand me when I said not a word?”

He winced at the idea of rehab.  It had been nearly intolerable the first time, and it made him feel ill to think of reliving it again.  He also didn’t see the need to go if he hadn’t used drugs.  He hoped for a symbolic slap on the wrist so that he could then get on with his life.

“A little time behind bars might do him good.”  John scowled.  He was especially annoyed.  Although he understood that Sherlock had used on occasion and had “danger nights” when he was likely to use and OD, he didn’t have a lot of sympathy for Sherlock’s dabbles with drugs.

“It wouldn’t be a ‘little’ time, John.  A drugs bust is serious issue.” Mycroft said flatly.

They all looked at Sherlock.  “Jail or rehab, brother.  Though I’m not sure either will do you any good.”

Sherlock instinctively knew there was something wrong with his critical thinking but was loath to admit it.  “Whatever Molly decides.” He said quietly, but he wouldn’t look at her.

They already knew Molly’s response.  Rehab.  It wouldn’t matter how angry she was with him; she simply could not send him to jail. She would save him from dire consequences yet again.  Then again, neither Mycroft nor John would have chosen prison either.  Although Mycroft might have permitted it for a short period, he would have managed to have Sherlock freed within a reasonably short time, probably less than six months.

For Sherlock, faced with a potentially lengthy prison term or a few weeks in a dreaded rehabilitation center, the latter was the lesser of the two evils.  He could practically filter it out for the entire stay.

“That’s settled then. I’ll put in some calls tonight and find a place for you first thing in the morning.” Mycroft said.  He motioned the four agents and dog that they were done, and they nodded slightly in oblige to him before taking their leave.  They would have made an arrest at Mycroft’s command, but there would be no arrest.  They had, however, confiscated all of the drugs which would later be destroyed.

“And when he gets out, he attends meetings at least weekly, more if necessary.” Molly added.

Again he wanted to protest but he didn’t dare.  He knew there would be consequences for his confession, but he had expected severed friendships, a broken engagement, possibly a period of disappointed silence from his brother.

“Someone should stay the night.  Could be a danger night.” John said.

“How is that possible when I don’t have any drugs?” Sherlock groused.

Molly snapped her fingers at him and shot him a stern glare, and he quieted.  She turned back to John and Mycroft.  “I’ll stay.  I have tomorrow off anyhow.  I’ll make certain he doesn’t get into any trouble.”

Mycroft and John left shortly after, but John pulled Molly aside and said quietly, “Are you sure about this?  I could call Mary and she’d understand if I stayed.”

“I’ll be fine.” She assured him.

He kissed her on the cheek and added, “Call me if you need reinforcements.”  She stood at the door to the flat and watched him descend the stairs, then turned to face Sherlock.

Sherlock looked at her but just barely.  The silence between them was tangibly painful made even more so by their intense desire to say something to melt the iceberg that separated them.  Finally he turned towards his bedroom. “In the future, never snap your fingers at me again.  I am not a dog.” He said quietly as he walked sullenly back to his bedroom, a bedroom that had been fairly torn apart.  He choked back a little sob at the disaster that awaited him.  He’d seen neater burglaries.  His armoire had been completely emptied with all the contents and drawers strewn on the floor.  There was evidence it had been moved, possibly turned over so that it could be inspected beneath, but it hadn’t been put back into the exact same spot.  The bed had been stripped, the mattresses lifted and searched.  The bed frame was searched.  Pictures had been removed from the wall and put back haphazardly.  He went into sensory overload, his heart racing in panic. He was frozen to his spot unable to make a decision of where to begin.  It was devastating.  Tears spilled down his cheeks before he could stop them.

Four hours later, at just past 0200, he had the room back in an order he could live with.  It needed fine-tuning, but he was too tired for those details.  Molly had not spoken to him at all during that time or come into the room to offer help, but he knew she was still in the flat.  He’d heard her turn on the kettle, and she had fetched a pillow and extra blanket from storage in John’s old room upstairs.   When he came out of his room, the lights in the sitting room had been turned off, but he knew she was still awake.

She was curled up on the sofa beneath an old blanket and crocheted afghan, her back to the room, and he quietly walked over to her and sat down on the floor between the sofa and the coffee table.  He sat in silence next to her for a few minutes before she rolled over to face him.  She had been crying but wasn’t crying then.  He took her hand and kissed the back of it and then held it tenderly between his own.

“We have both known that I have a sleeping monster within me.  For the most part it does sleep, but on occasion it awakens and wants to be fed. I have not fed it.  I have been attempting to starve it, but the monster knows my name, and it has been calling after me lately.  I hope someday that it will simply fade away entirely, but for now it remains.” he said quietly.  

She blinked at his words but didn’t respond.  He continued, “For the record, I could have chosen to dispose of everything and never told anyone, but I didn’t want to live that lie.  It would have followed me the rest of my life.  So I chose to bring it out in the open, like a festering wound that needed to be cleaned and cauterized.   I knew it was a risk to expose my indiscretion, that I could lose everything I hold dear, especially you, but if you and I are to continue, although I am certain that’s tabled for the time, then I need to be honest.  I need to be someone you can wholly trust.  All I’m asking is that you not make up your mind about us, if you are thinking of changing it.”

She could see that he was sincere, that he was hurting, but she felt strangely impervious to it.  She didn’t know what she could say that wouldn’t sound as if she were enabling his habit.  She rolled away from him.  “Goodnight, Sherlock.” She said quietly.

He heard her sniffle a little, and he knew she was crying again.  He wanted to comfort her, to wrap her up tightly in his arms and tell her that everything would be all right now, but he felt the nip of rejection and sensed more could come if he so much as laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder.  He wasn’t even certain he could tell her that he loved her and not have that rejected too.

This, he thought, was the proverbial “rock bottom” for him.  He’d been very close during the days that followed his shooting of Magnussen and again when she had miscarried, but now he felt the sting of relationships possibly being ripped asunder.

He returned to his bedroom and crawled into bed.  Somehow it was the worst day of his life, and yet he was also filled with a great sense of relief.  The monster within was still hungry, but now he had no food for it even if he were inclined to feed it, and he wasn’t.

Mycroft texted him at 0600 that a car would be waiting for him at 0700 to take him to a private facility, and Sherlock was out front in sweats with a packed suitcase at the established time.  He hadn’t slept but an hour and looked it.  Molly came out with him, and she also looked as if she hadn’t slept at all.  They were emotionally spent in different ways.  

As the driver loaded his suitcase into the boot, Sherlock turned to her.  He leaned down and kissed her right cheek, his right hand tenderly cupping the left side of her head.  He lingered for a moment as his brain frantically searched for something to say.  Finally he said, “Thank you for not choosing incarceration. I shall make certain you don’t regret your decision, Molly Hooper. I promise.”  

“Don’t promise what you can’t keep.” she said quietly.  “It’s cruel. I can’t bear it.”

That stung a little as it betrayed her doubt in him.  “I never make a promise unless I intend to keep it.” He kissed her lips lightly, then kissed her brow and pulled her into a tight embrace, almost as if he would squeeze the life out of her.  “I love you.  I love you.  I love you.”  His words were spoken so quietly that only she could hear them.  He gave her another quick kiss and then turned and got into the car.  

Molly watched him being driven away as the early morning breeze tossed her disheveled hair in all directions.  Her heart had sunk the night before, and she had not recovered.  That would take time.  She felt an arm go around her, and she turned to find Mrs. Hudson at her side.  “It’s not the end, my dear.  It’s the beginning, and very likely a better beginning.”  Mrs. Hudson had known of the raid the night before but had been politely warned by Mycroft not to interfere in any way but to stay in her own flat. That didn’t mean, however, that she hadn’t kept her door open to listen.  She knew precisely the outcome.

“How do you know?” Molly asked.

“Because when Sherlock Holmes sets his mind to do something, it gets done, and it gets done properly.  I think he may have finally set his mind to it.” She smiled and gave Molly and gentle hug.  “Now, how about a nice cuppa and some breakfast?”  

Molly continued to watch the car with Sherlock until it rounded the corner and disappeared into early morning traffic.  She then turned and numbly walked alongside Mrs. Hudson who kept her arm supportively around the young woman.

Molly took her tea and a little breakfast with Mrs. Hudson, but her lack of sleep left her with little appetite, and she made her way back to Sherlock’s flat.  She looked towards the sofa where she had been most of the night and then towards his bedroom.  She wanted to go home and crawl into her own bed, but she was too drained, too over-wrought.  The sofa had been uncomfortable with its uneven support, but to sleep in his bed after what had happened, especially when he wasn’t there, would only make her seem pathetic, she thought.   

She was still angry, although not to the degree she had been the previous night, but the thought that brought her to deep tears was the idea that if it were in fact the beginning of the end between them that she would lose his parents as part of her life, for she had come to love them intensely.  She had imagined herself as part of the family, of holidays together, of bringing them grandchildren, of reveling in their delight and basking in the warmth of their love.  They had become a part of her heart.  Even Mycroft with his odd, emotionally removed persona was someone she had come to treasure and adore.  To imagine losing all of those hopes, dreams and relationships was devastating.

The one thing she could not deny about Sherlock was the clarity in his eyes, a clarity that hadn’t always been there.  She had seen the dullness of his eyes not long after John’s wedding, a dullness from his foray into drugs that continued during his long recovery after being shot.  It had slowly abated after his last time in rehab, and the sparkle and life had returned to his eyes.  It was still there as fiercely bright as she had ever seen it, and that alone suggested to her that he was telling the truth about not having actually put drugs into his system since rehab.  But would or could Sherlock stay clean, and was she a fool to continue to stand by his side?  She was furious with him for pouring vinegar into their relationship and her dreams.  Would she ever be able to trust him?  Would she always wonder if he had a new hiding place?  Even 221C had been thoroughly searched but found lacking in anything but a few miscellaneous chemicals.  He hadn’t really moved much down there yet.  He was not a man who was malleable although she had detected a little rounding of his sharper edges since their relationship had taken a more intimate turn. His lie, however, had been one of omission, but he was a man who hated lying and hated it worse in himself.  He was bluntly honest to the point of bordering on offensive, and he was never apologetic about it.

She chose his bed.  It was far more comfortable than the sofa, and it was a bed with which she was familiar having slept with him in it a few times.  He had made the bed before he left.  He was meticulous that way as if having attended a military boarding school.  Not a wrinkle in the bedcovers, and the sheets were tucked in tightly. The sheets had been changed the night before, but they still retained the smell of him, traces of his cologne, his sweat.  She knew his smell, and she breathed in his lingering essence.  She moved her body into the space where he normally slept, but it had long lost his warmth and was cool against her skin. She was sorry she had snapped her fingers at him but not sorry she had lost her temper.  She had no tolerance for his drug usage, but she also couldn’t deny her heart.  She was angry but she still loved him.  She knew that he was trying in his own way to be a better man; that is, she and John were his conduits for him to rediscover the part of his soul that he kept under lock and key which sometimes made him seem inhuman like a machine.  She believed in the truth of the experiences they had endured, and she believed in the truth of his responses.  She believed in Sherlock Holmes, but she cried herself to sleep again.

The treatment facility was a converted large country home in Hertford that sat on seven acres well back from the main road and was obscured by a high, ivy-covered brick walls and tall iron gates. The staff outnumbered the patients 2-to-1 on any given day and included ground security, chefs, a medical staff, grounds keepers, housekeepers, and animal keepers as there was a small menagerie of various animals including dogs, cats, goats, ducks and a retired old mare who had been saved from the slaughterhouse.  

It was owned and operated by Dr. Amir Schiff and was intensely private and exclusive, catering only to celebrities, the rich and famous, and on occasion an extended member of the royal family.  It was a place few people knew about, and it had a reputation for being one of the toughest recovery facilities in Britain: tough because there was no room for failure.   It was also quite pricey, and there were usually no more than a half dozen patients.  It was not a lock-down facility, but confidentiality meant that most patients did not venture beyond the grounds.  

Sherlock was greeted at the front doors of the facility by Dr. Schiff, a man well into his 70s with grey curly-hair, well-trimmed but full facial hair and piercing blue eyes that immediately seemed to bore directly into Sherlock’s mind with startling precision.  “Mr. Holmes.  Welcome. I trust you’ll find your stay with us useful.”

Sherlock murmured, “Just so you know, I am clean.”

“So I have been informed, but we still have to search you and do all the standard tests.  You know the routine.  Then after that we’ll get you settled in.  I’ve got you on my schedule for 1300, right after your first lunch.  This way.”

Despite Dr. Schiff having been given the report that Sherlock had tested clean the night before, Sherlock was subjected again to the same tests and invasive procedures as well as a blood test and a full torso x-ray.  They wanted to make certain he hadn’t swallowed a small pouch of drugs that he could pass and retrieve later.  Sherlock hated the tests but at the same time was resigned to them.  His fate.  He had brought it on himself.  He knew Mycroft would say that he had now technically been clean for just over twelve hours, and Sherlock knew that twelve hours counted for nothing in the life of an addict.  Most addicts could manage for twelve hours if they had to, so he counted it no victory.

He was shown to a bedroom that was freshly prepared for him.  The walls were papered in a flocked rose chintz pattern reminiscent of a quaint English country cottage, but it was equipped with WiFi and had a 36” flat screen television mounted to the wall.  His room had a large bed, desk, wardrobe and bedside table with a lamp.  A private bath just to the left inside his doorway rounded out all the things he would need.  For being so expensive, it afforded little luxury or opulence, but it was comfortable and smelled of freshly washed linens and lemon air freshener.  A basket of seasonal fruit graced the desk, and a Gideon Bible was in his bedside table drawer.

There was certainly nothing to complain of regarding the food.  It was prepared by a 4-star chef and her staff of two.  The cuisine was completely organic and delicious.  He didn’t know the other faces at the table, but he was never bothered with celebrity news. They seemed to know him which he found a little unsettling as he would have preferred to remain anonymous to the best of his ability.  The young teenage pop star flirted at him a bit for which he reminded her rather bluntly that he was taken and that her advances were inappropriate and disrespectful under the circumstances, not to mention the fact that he was old enough to be her father. Furthermore, were he her father, he would have reared her to behave with better decorum towards men she didn’t know instead of behaving like jailbait.  He launched into a five-minute diatribe on the statistics of young women he’d seen on the slab in the morgue due to crimes of passion or plain stupidity.  Everyone stopped eating in stunned silence and sudden lack of appetite. He didn’t care if his words offended.  The young woman dropped a few choice swear words at him and flipped him the bird.  “How very boring.  Try something original for a change.” he said tartly.   He said little else during the first meal and was terribly relieved when it was over.

He met with Dr. Schiff in his office just after lunch.  It was an office that reminded Sherlock somewhat of his own sitting room with piles of books and papers, bookcases  that reached to the ceiling and were over-filled.  Dr. Schiff always sipped on orange spice tea during his sessions, and it was a heady, sweet aroma in the room.  Sherlock scanned his book titles.  He had several of them on his own shelves had had read many others.  Probably the posh, nearly royal what’s-her-name who was sunning herself in the Zen garden out back hadn’t read any of them.

“I understand you created a bit of stir at lunch. The infamous biting Sherlock Holmes comeuppance.  I do hope that won’t be pattern.  Everyone here is struggling with something, Sherlock, including you.  I implore you to show a little more tolerance.”  

“And exactly how long am I here for?” Sherlock asked.

“That rather depends on you, doesn’t it?”

Dr. Schiff offered Sherlock a cup of his brew, but Sherlock shook his head as he scanned the room and took in countless visual clues about Dr. Schiff.  He had heard of him and his facility, but he had heard of most of the facilities.  “Before we begin, I should tell you that I have one ground rule.” Dr. Schiff said.  “You are free to walk out of this facility and go home any time you wish.  This is not a prison.  However, if you do walk out the doors with such intent, you may not come back.  I will not waste your time with me, so please have the courtesy not to waste mine.” Dr. Schiff pointed to a large, comfortable chair, and Sherlock sat down. “Do you understand why you are here?”

Sherlock tensed a bit. “Some think I may still have a problem.”

“But you don’t.”

He hesitated to say. “Is that a rhetorical question or a statement of fact?”

“Oh, I absolutely believe that you believe you don’t have a problem, but you’re the one who called your brother to expose the drugs you had hidden within your flat.  That you had them is a problem, and the fact that you keep insisting that you are clean is another problem, and that you don’t see it as a problem is a problem.  Do you see the problem?”

The grilling had begun, and Sherlock was not being eased into it. He already wanted to walk out.  He hated therapists.  He hated confessing.  He hated opening the dark spaces of his soul and exposing them to critical thinking.  Yes, he had summoned Mycroft to his flat, but this part – this anticipated baring of his soul and his weaknesses was the part he dreaded the most.

“You can’t be an alcoholic who is trying to beat his addiction but keep a stocked wine cellar or a bottle of gin hidden behind the books.  Or a porn addict who still keeps stacks of pornographic magazines in the closet.  Do you see the problem?”

“There are certain incongruities, yes.”

“Your file says that you’ve been through quite a string of therapists in your youth and can be a bit belligerent during sessions. Is that what I can expect while you’re here?”

Sherlock sighed and rolled his eyes in response.

“I also read that during your last stay in rehab that you followed the protocol but were generally uncommunicative in private therapy.”

“She was an idiot.”

“Dr. Morrison is a highly respected colleague of mine.”

“I’m quite well read in psychology, just so you know.” Sherlock said.  “I know all the tricks.”

“Yes, but I’ve been practicing these  _tricks_ , as you call them, since you were still shitting your nappies.  I think that trumps your sophomoric book learning. I’ve heard it all, and I’ve seen it all.  You cannot annoy me.  You cannot bully me, and should attempt to threaten me in any way, you will forfeit your stay here and immediately be turned over to the proper authorities for incarceration.  I have seen fake tears and can spot them a mile off, and I have seen real tears.  If you are fake with me, I will call you out on it until you get real. Although at times I might be friendly, I will never be your friend.”

“What are you then?”

Schiff sipped his tea and added, “I am the one holding the mirror you do not wish to look into.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes.  “That’s a relief.  I was worried.  No, I wasn’t.”

Dr. Schiff wrote down “Still belligerent in therapy.”

Sherlock attended private sessions daily with Dr. Schiff.  The following are excerpts from those sessions:

*****

“I have not used drugs for twelve months, and yet I was subjected to a full body cavity search.”

“Standard procedure for anyone who comes into the facility.  But you know that.  The problem is that you think not using but being in possession is okay, that it somehow that elevates you into being clean. You know you’re lying to yourself.  You know it was foolish.  Tempting the beast.  That’s why you’re here, so let’s stop with the twaddle, shall we?”

“I am not an addict.  I am—I was a user only. There’s a difference.”

“Oh yes, I’ve heard that one before too.”

*****

“In the past when I would get bored or be on a case where I needed to heighten my thought process I would use cocaine.  My mind is like a racing engine, but sometimes I need it to go even faster.  Cocaine has certain properties that help me in that regard.”

“But you say you haven’t taken drugs for the past twelve months.  Has your boredom abated?  Have you found some other means to quicken your thoughts?”

“I can tell you that it takes a great deal of caffeine and quite a lot of sugar, but it’s not the same.”

“Likely your pancreas, liver and kidneys don’t thank you either.”

“They’re holding their own.”

“So you miss cocaine then.”

Sherlock unconsciously wrung his hands a bit. “I walk into a room and take thousands of pictures with my mind of observations you would never see, and I know instantly about a place or person or crime.  Coalesced information is bursting to come out of me like a pressure cooker.  I’m surprised my blood pressure isn’t abnormally high.  Do I miss those moments of unusual clarity that cocaine has provided in the past?  Yes.  Do I miss how I felt afterwards when coming off the high?  No.  I don’t want to go back there.”

“But sugar and caffeine don’t alleviate boredom.  How do you deal with that?”

“I look for cases.  I play the violin.  I run.  Sex. Research. Writing. I try to stay busy.  Boredom is less of an issue in my life now.”

“Why now?”

“Because I have friends now.”

“You didn’t have friends before?”

“Before John Watson?  No.  Not for many, many years, if you could even call them friends back then.”

“But even after John Watson began to share a flat with you, there were still excursions into drugs.”

“Old habits die hard.”

“So do old excuses.”

The two men stared at each other.  It had become like a chess match, but Sherlock was losing, and he didn’t like it.

*****

“Because I’m a high-functioning sociopath.”

“No.  That’s not even a clinical term.  That’s just something you made up.  I’m rather surprised you would try to get that past me.  A true sociopath isn’t self-aware enough of their issues to self-label.   High-functioning, as you well know, is a term used of savants, autistics, even those with Downs Syndrome.  It doesn’t really fit with the word sociopath, does it? Why did you choose the term?  Because you did choose it.”

Sherlock shrugged.  Of all the conversations he anticipated, this was the one he feared the most.  It was the one that could potentially unlock the vault of emotions from his past that he had long buried. “Feel free to offer your theory.”

“You may have adopted some sociopathic traits, but I suspect they are just for show, perhaps as a defense.”

“A defense?  What do I need a defense for?”

“Same reason everyone does.  To keep people at an arm’s length or more.  To keep from being hurt, but it’s been my experience that hurt people often hurt people. Strike first. Isn’t that your modus operandi?”

Sherlock tensed a little at the statement, and his body language was noted.

*****

“I don’t believe in a God.” Sherlock said.

“No, you have no need to.  You’ve made yourself god.   Your own values, your own morals.  You hold them superlative above all else.  You are the supreme authority and you answer to no one.  How blessed is the Earth to have you in our midst.  You’ve even managed to rise from the dead.  Twice! Might we expect you to walk on water this evening?  There’s a pool out back if you wish to demonstrate.”

“Sarcastic apotheosis duly noted.” Sherlock scowled as he shifted in his chair.

“Maybe it’s time you took off the god costume and joined the human race.”

Sherlock squinted at him.  He wanted to find some sort of startling deduction about Dr. Schiff, something to throw him off guard and perhaps even unsettle him.    “I perceive you are man who does believe in God, of the Jewish persuasion, and you’ve visited the Holy Land twice, maybe three times, but you haven’t found what you’re looking for there.  Hard to track an invisible man in the sky.  You attend both synagogue and church, but if your parents were still alive, they would have been appalled at the latter.  You have a sister who doesn’t speak to you anymore because you disapproved of her lifestyle.  Passed away, you never reconciled, and now her children don’t speak to you either.”

Dr. Schiff startled for a moment, but then he shook his head and smiled.  “Defense.  You think I’m trying to hurt you, but I’m not.  Mirror, Sherlock.”

*****

“What were you thinking about when you were being tortured?”

“Failure.”

“Why failure?”

“I didn’t know how much longer I could hold out with the pain before I gave them anything they wanted.  That is failure.  Some forms of torture are so extreme that you can’t even give them what they want because you can’t stop your own screaming.  I wasn’t at that point nor dealing with that kind of torture, but I shouldn’t have let those thoughts come to me. I’m better than that.”

“You mean you should have compartmentalized the pain in your mind palace.”

“Exactly.”

“You returned to Britain with three cracked ribs.  How much support did you receive in debriefing?”

“If you are implying I have residual post traumatic stress disorder, which I rather suspect you are, I do not.  I was fit to return to my work, which I did.”

“Liar.  You didn’t come back to the same England or the life that you had before you left.  That on the heels of your torture in Serbia.  You tried to create a new life for yourself, but you’ve never really dealt with all that trauma, have you?”

“The transition was quick.  It was not traumatic.”

“Again, liar.  You’re experiencing anger right now when I bring it up.”

*****

“Your nightmares are worse when you are experiencing a craving. Not having the triggers around will help. We could also try methadone.”

“No.” He said, and he rubbed his belly scar and winced a little.

“Still hurts, doesn’t it?

“Sometimes.”

“Liver surgery is one of the most painful surgeries to recovery from. Very high suicide rate. If you were torpid for any length of time, scar tissue would have developed quite a web and thus the continued pain.  Surgery can sometimes alleviate some of that.”

“No.” Sherlock said adamantly. “No more surgeries.”

“How long were you on morphine, Sherlock?”

“Months.”

“How did they wean you off it?”

“I weaned myself.”

“And yet 250 milliliters of morphine were found in your flat when it was recently searched.”

“I purposefully forgot where I had hidden it.”

“You purposely forgot. Oh yes.  Your mind palace.  But is it really a mind palace or just an eidetic memory combined with hyperthymesia?” Before Sherlock could answer he continued, “But people with those gifts can’t randomly delete things.  Why did you hide it from yourself?”

“Because I knew…”

“You knew you’d find it again if you really wanted it.”

“If I  _needed_ it.” Sherlock corrected.

“Exactly.” Dr. Schiff said. “I do believe that you haven’t taken drugs for the last twelve months, by the way, but I also believe it was just a matter of time before they beckoned you back into the fold, and you were dangerously close the night before you came here.  That’s part of why you were having nightmares. The other part is likely stress.  How does your fiancé feel about all of this?”

That hurt, and he looked away.  “I don’t know where things are between us at the moment.  I wouldn’t blame her if she walked away. I would walk away from me.”

“Would you walk away from her if the situation was reversed?”

“I don’t know.”  

“What do you want to happen?”

“Do you want the selfish answer or the altruistic one?”

“Neither.  I want the honest one.  Always.”

“My brain says I may fail her again and that she’s better off without me. Eventually I will make her miserably unhappy and disappointed.”

“What does your heart say?”

For the first time in therapy Sherlock’s eyes suddenly filled with tears and he worked hard to keep them in, but Dr. Schiff could see them and see that there was genuine pain behind them. “My life would be incomplete without her.” Sherlock managed.

*****

“As a graduate chemist, have you ever thought of making your own drugs?”

“No.” Sherlock answered.  

“Because it would be easy to do with all those chemicals you must keep around for your experiments.  I would think that could be a cue anticipation for you.”

“Strangely no.  I use my skills for forensic science, not pharmacology. I don’t keep those types of chemicals.”

“But you could get them.”

“If I really wanted to, I could get the materials to build a nuclear bomb, but I have no interest in that either.  Call me lazy.  Why are you pursuing this line of questioning?”

“So that you can hear yourself say it.  It’s not enough to think it.  Sometimes you have to say it to believe it, Sherlock.”

“As I said, call me lazy.  Drugs are readily available and so much more convenient when purchased.  One makes drugs to deal them.  I’m not a dealer.  I am only a consumer.”   _I am only a consumer._ His own words gave him pause.  A long pause.

Dr. Schiff watched him in silence, allowing Sherlock to digest his own words.  A breakthrough had occurred, a shift in thought, a recognition of unapologetic and uncompromising truth.  

*****

Sherlock scanned the shelves in the reading room hoping to find something that was at the very least useful, but in general it was either insipid fiction or New Age philosophy, and he had a tolerance for neither.  He felt a hand on his shoulder.  “Not finding anything suitable?” Dr. Schiff asked.

“I have a case I’m working on.  I was hoping I might find something that might prove useful.”

“I’m afraid you won’t find books on criminal minds and forensic science here, although I have some psychology books you are welcome to read.”

“To improve my sophomoric understanding? No, it’s not that kind of research.” Sherlock said. “I need history books, the origin of mankind, the history of the universe.  That sort of thing.” Sherlock said.

“Well, you can always start by reading the first several chapters of Genesis.” Dr. Schiff said.

“No.” Sherlock said.  “I mean real history.”

“No,” Dr. Schiff countered.  “You mean theoretical history.  Did you by chance catch that recent news report out of China where DNA samples were taken from all over China in attempt to prove that they are a totally separate people group?”

That caught Sherlock’s attention.  “What were the findings?”

“That they all have ancestry from the African continent.  I could have told them that and saved them all that trouble.  That, Sherlock, is in Genesis 10.  Do you read Greek or Hebrew?”

“Greek.” Sherlock replied.

“English is clumsy but overall accurate in translation, but the Greek is much better although Hebrew would still be the best.  Why don’t you read it in Greek. I have a copy in my office.”

“Isn’t it against your creed to proselytize?”

“You want history, I’m giving you history.  Whether you choose to incorporate it into your research is entirely up to you.  However, you would be greatly remiss for not taking it into account.  When you get to chapter 10, I’ll take you through a root word study and you can trace all the major people groups on the planet.”

“I don’t believe it is a holy book.  It is only written by men.”

“My dear Mr. Holmes that is hardly a reason to discredit it.  All books, after all, are written down by men.”

Minutes later Sherlock reluctantly accepted the Greek Bible.  “Since you are Jewish, just why do you go to church?” he asked.

“You’re the detective.” Dr. Schiff said simply.

He received and sent emails and texts during his stay, but he made few outgoing calls.  He rescheduled a violin lesson and also informed Professor Durbin that a pressing personal matter had come up which required his complete attention.  His emails and texts with Molly and hers in return were brief, unemotional, almost cool.  At least she was still communicating with him, but he wondered if she was waiting until he returned home to break off their relationship.

Sherlock returned to Baker Street after four weeks in rehab, and there was no welcoming committee.  It was a solitary and lonely experience.  Even Mrs. Hudson was out.  He was not feeling particularly gregarious, however, as he needed to decompress from his experience.

He immediately felt ill at ease.  Personal belongings weren’t entirely in their proper place although obviously someone had tried to put them back as much as possible.  Mrs. Hudson?  Molly?  John?  He couldn’t be sure.  While he appreciated their efforts, it was like putting on a suit that was ill-fitting.  His refrigerator was freshly stocked with his favorite quick goods. String cheese, bread, yoghurt, clotted cream, butter and jam.  Perhaps Mrs. Hudson had done the shopping.  A quick check for his favorite biscuits and digestives confirmed that. Someone had also dusted, something he rarely did as he studied dust.  He suspected that would be Molly, and because she had dusted, he knew that their relationship wasn't quite in the shambles he had anticipated. Yet he did not ring or text her immediately. She knew he was to be released on that day, but she had also not attempted to contact him. He knew she was giving him space. He just hoped she would not stay silent too long.  

He didn't stay in the flat. He needed to find himself in London again, visit his bolt holes, have a meal off the Marylebone Road, take a run through Regent’s Park, ride the Tube, even take a ride on The London Eye where he was able to survey his territory the best. He made his presence known again in that great city.  Whether the residents of London had been aware of his absence he didn't know, but he made certain he was seen. He took a taxi to the Waterloo Bridge to check in with a few of his homeless network, but no one was there.  Pride kept him from calling Bill Wiggins who had had his own time in rehab and seemed to be making a better life for himself as well as attending meetings regularly.

At 1900, Sherlock slipped quietly into a meeting for recovering addicts that was held within three blocks of Baker Street. He had attended meetings sporadically at that location but had stopped going several months previously, but the facilitator welcomed him back without question or judgment. Sherlock was determined to make a better start and to keep his promise to Molly, and he knew that only by being accountable would he have any hope of success. He knew now that all his brain power and will could not defeat the beast within. There would be a daily battle, but he had humbled his ego just enough to admit he couldn't fight his battle alone, nor would he ever attempt to again.

When Sherlock returned to Baker Street after his meeting, he made himself a cup of tea.  Somehow he longed for the aroma of the orange spice tea that Dr. Schiff had always sipped, and he  made a note to pick up some the next time he was out.

The linens on his bed had been freshly changed. He was certain that was Mrs Hudson too.  He wasn't ready for bed, however. He played his violin for an hour and then began to move some of his equipment down to 221C. As far as he knew, his life was still on a path towards marriage, and he would carry on as if it were so. However, it was four days before he sent the text:

WILL YOU HAVE DINNER WITH ME?

 


	4. Chapter 4

Molly agreed to have dinner with Sherlock, but she didn’t want to have dinner at either of their residences.  She needed a first rendezvous after his time in rehab to be on neutral territory, and she chose the rooftop bar and grille at the Boundary.  It was a place she had been to before but it didn’t have too much seating although there would be just enough people to keep it from being too intimate.  

That she was meeting with him at all gave Sherlock a little hope that their relationship wasn’t going to end.  He hadn’t been entirely certain during their brief communicaes while he was sequestered.  He understood immediately, however, the implications of meeting in a less than private setting.  That was entirely his fault.  Anything at all that was going to go wrong between them was entirely his fault.

He sat at the bar and ordered a glass of Coke while he waited.  He had arrived early in order to greet her when she walked in, and when she did arrive, he immediately stood up and walked over to her.  She was summery in a vivid floral print dress, her chestnut hair pinned back from her face with with a flower hairpin, and she smelled of plumeria, which he loved. He gave her a kiss on her right cheek and said, “You look lovely.”

She looked around the room.  The people, the noise.  “This was not a good idea. Sorry.”

“Where would you rather go?” he asked. “Anywhere is fine.”

They settled on Regent’s Park.  A nice evening stroll in the beautiful, sculptured gardens, fountains and glorious fauna and foliage.  He purchased Scotch pies and canned fruit drinks from a street vendor.  The summer air was warm and fragrant with narcissus and freshly cut grass, and the park was still quite active for the evening.  They chose a bench on a grassy embankment by one of the park’s quiet waterways.  Two swans were resting on the embankment but moved lazily into the water when Molly and Sherlock took the bench.  Their conversation had thus far been awkward and superficial.  He had noticed, however, that she was still wearing the engagement ring.  “So where do we go from here, Miss Hooper?” he asked quietly

“I need to know I can trust you in everything and at all times.” she said.

“I understand.” he said.  There was no point in trying to assure her that he would do his utmost to always be trustworthy.  The words would only ring of hollow desperation.

“I need you to be honest with me about your drug cravings and not try to hide them or handle them on your own.  I can’t fix that problem for you, and I won’t allow you to take me down with you, should you choose that path. I won’t. If you choose to drown, I won’t allow you to drown me with you.  But if you tell me it’s happening, I’ll stand beside you and hold your hand through it and whatever else you need me to do.  If you are honest with me, I will always, always have your back.” She said firmly, but her voice was shaking a bit.  She was nervous.

“I understand.” he said again. “Thank you.”

“I’ve been to a few meetings for spouses and families of addicts, because I don’t want to be blind about this, and I don’t want to be an enabler.  Ever.  I intend to continue to go to my meetings for a while.” she said.

“Probably a wise idea.” he said.  All of his answers were quiet and remarkably humble.

She struggled with her next words, and he waited patiently.  His relationship with her still felt in a tenuous balance.  “I want this to work between us, Sherlock, but I have to guard my heart right now.  I’m a little afraid of being deceived by the drugs, so on the off chance this doesn’t work out, I don’t think we should sleep together again until we either get married or break it off entirely.”

He hadn’t quite been expecting that restriction, but once again he said, “I understand.  And I respectfully agree.”

“I’m not saying that to punish you.  I’m saying it to protect me.” she said.

“I really do understand.” he insisted.  He tenderly took her hand into his.  “I do hope one day you’ll forgive me.”

“I already have forgiven you.” she said. “I’m just being cautious.”

“Prudent.” he agreed.

“I’m sorry I snapped my fingers at you.” she said.

“I quite deserved it.” he admitted.  “I can’t say I’ve beaten the beast, Molly.  But I can say that I’ve beaten it back, and I will continue to fight it daily, and I do believe that I will win.”

“I won't make any excuses for you.”  She wove her fingers with his. “But I believe in you, William Sherlock Scott Holmes, and I always will.  I know you are a great man, and I have seen into your soul, and I trust what I know about you that is true.  I know who you are.”

He kissed the back of her hand and held it like a treasure.  “So how do we do this, Molly?   How do we move forward from here?”

She smiled a little at him.  He had missed her smile.  He had missed everything about her, but whenever she smiled at him, he always had a moment of pure beauty.  It was only late July, and their honeymoon trip was booked and paid for early December.  Four months of not enjoying waking up with her, making love to her, sharing the most intimate parts of each other seemed an insurmountably long time, but he would honor her wishes.

Their relationship became almost tame by comparison, perhaps even chaste.  He began to properly court her, something he had never done.  He wanted to woo her all over again, to prove himself to be the man he knew she needed him to be.  This even included a backyard BBQ at her eldest brother’s house with her nieces and nephews running around, her mother in attendance, her other brother also in attendance with his wife and children.  It wasn’t a completely comfortable situation for him, but he did it.  He tolerated her two older brothers well enough, but they were everything he wasn’t: blue collar, rugged, scrappers who had no issue getting into a dirty wrestling match or having a friendly game of hoops, having a beer and watching a football game featuring Manchester United.   By comparison, Sherlock was an awkward wallflower whose erudite vocabulary quickly sent Molly’s eight-year-old nephew, Peter, to fetch a dictionary.  Peter was an exceptionally bright child, and whenever Sherlock used a word he didn’t understand, he would immediately look it up and tell everyone what it meant.  It became a bit of a joke and a game, and Sherlock discovered he related better to the boy than to Molly’s brothers.  

Molly’s mother sat mostly in the shade beneath a large brimmed Panama hat and sunglasses, a cigarette in one hand, a drink in the other.  Her mostly grey hair was dyed an unnatural shade of something almost mauve.  At times she was effusively chatty and other times off in her own world but always in the blue haze of a tobacco smoke with a gravely, other worldly voice to match.  She was as pretentious as a faded actress used to being fawned over but whose adoring audience had long since gone.  Even the grandchildren mostly avoided her, but she had little interest in them anyhow and would not allow them to call her “Granny.”  She was “Miss Paula.”  Molly’s conversation with her was limited and superficial.  She suspected her mother might be off her meds, and she quietly warned Sherlock “Do your best not to engage her.”  

For Sherlock, there was no sport in deducing someone he knew was mentally ill, but he remained polite if somewhat distant.  Even so, he was unable to avoid her entirely.  He knew what Molly had had to survive growing up under her, and he disliked her immensely although with a tinge of pity.  He knew that by the end of the day she would make some comment to Molly about him that would simply be another dig at Molly’s self-esteem.  He was also concerned that she might insist that any stories Molly had told him about her were completely false and that Molly had been a very difficult child.  Or she would make herself out to have been a loving, caring parent and that Molly was her little angel.  

Between the times that Molly stayed with him or checked on him to make certain he was alright, It was only young Peter who kept him half sane during the afternoon.  Peter took great delight in quizzing him from the dictionary, but there didn’t seem to be a word Sherlock didn’t know.  Even so, Peter was determined to find one.  For his efforts, Sherlock taught him a mild “swear” word in Afrikaans but also suggested the boy only use it in extreme situations when no other word would do.  The actual swear translation was  _horse shit_. Always better to swear in another language, Sherlock insisted.

Although there were a few questions about his work as a detective, he deflected the conversation as best he could, certain none of them would understand.  They didn’t understand why Molly chose her line of work, so there would be no explaining his work, especially as a “real” job, nor would they ever comprehend his methods.  Then again no one save Mycroft ever did.

Nevertheless he was glad when the afternoon was over.  He felt as if he’d done his duty, managed to hold his tongue for the most part, and made a cursory attempt at being polite.  He suspected he would never exactly fit in with her family, and that didn’t bother him at all.

Contrary to Mycroft’s insistence that Sherlock abandon the case being mapped out on the wall over the sofa, Sherlock had left it all in place and had continued to add to the three columns.  There were very few “corrections” thus far: items from one column crossed out and placed in another.  It annoyed him that there were any corrections at all.

He continued to move some of his belongings into 221C now that the plumbing renovations had been completed.  The damp issue would have to be constantly monitored, treated and maintained, but short of tearing the 19th century building down and completely rebuilding, there was little to be done to permanently fix the issue.

The sitting room of 221C became his laboratory.  He therefore kept the floors free of carpeting.  He had new linoleum installed, a white tile pattern to aid in the cleanliness feel to the room.  If he was running experiments he couldn’t afford to let them be exposed the anything that might alter the outcome.  He did have to assure Mrs. Hudson, however, that he would not be attempting to re-animate corpses in some sort of Frankenstein reenactment nor would there ever be a corpse in 221C.  _Or body parts._ Furthermore, she was definitely not going to be his housekeeper in 221C, nor would she bring his morning tea downstairs.  She didn’t mind carrying the tray upstairs, but that was it.  He was also to make certain the smoke detectors were never disabled (as he had a tendency to do when he was experimenting using fire), and he was to keep a fire-extinguisher on hand at all times.  

The single bedroom was converted to “man cave” of sorts complete with comfortable seating and a large television.  He moved some of his periodicals into that room as well as some of his often referenced books on chemistry, and that created shelf space in 221B for Molly’s books.  She didn’t have near the collection of books that he did, but as they weren’t currently sleeping together, she also wasn’t moving anything over to 221B.  That could happen after the wedding, were they to make it that far.

The honeymoon trip was still booked and paid for.  If he needed to cancel it, he could, but he wouldn’t get all his money back.  Or, he could just go alone were things not to work out between them.  He refused to believe that they would break off, however, and he was determined to do all within his power to assure that.

He discussed his current case with Molly, although not in great detail.  When it came to the doubt about his brother’s death, however, he thought that perhaps she could offer some insight as a pathologist.  Also, he wanted to make her aware of his plans to go to Germany and dig around a bit at some details.  He asked her if she wanted to accompany him, but she couldn’t get away from work and simply wished him the best.

He never told John about the possible suspicion over his brother’s death and as such saw no need to involve him in that branch of the case.  He suspected it would all turn to nothing anyhow.  

To satisfy his curiosity, he returned to Munich and then rented a car and drove to Schwangau to meet with Birgit, his deceased brother’s nanny, to see if there was anything unusual about Ford’s onset of cancer.  He hadn’t seen her since the funeral, and she was now working as a tour guide at nearby Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria.  She was startled to see him amongst the tourists, as if seeing the ghost of his brother, and she gasped loudly in front of all the tourists.  They all turned to look at him, and he shrugged a bit.  He went through the tour, waited for her to conduct two more tours and then took her out for dinner at Madame Pleusch in nearby Füssen.  It was cozy and kitschy, but the food was hearty and filling.  

“How did you find me?” she asked.

“Madeline’s godparents.” he replied.

“Of course.” she said as if suddenly realizing the obvious.  “I miss Madeline, but I will travel to Paris at Christmas and see her. I have friends who live near Sacre Cœur who have invited me to come.  Do you think it will be confusing for her?”

“Confusing how?” he asked.

“I don’t want her to think I’ve come to take her away.  She was like a daughter to me.” Birgit said.

“I am told she is adjusting to her new circumstance as well as to be expected, but I am certain she will be delighted to see you.” He smiled a little, and she blushed.  “And she’s coming to England next month.  Perhaps if you can get away for a few days, you could visit her there as well.”

“No, I can’t leave my job in the height of tourist season.” she said somewhat sadly, but Sherlock knew it was an excuse.  It was simply too soon for her to see the child again.

Because he had never considered the idea that Ford’s death had been anything more than just unfortunate health, he had never inquired for a full story on the start of the symptoms.

“When did he reveal to you that he had cancer?” Sherlock asked.

Her answer came quickly.  “About two years ago.  I had been working for him since his wife died.  If he had cancer then, he didn’t say it.  He may have known for a while before he told me.  He was starting chemo when he told me.  That’s when I moved in.  Before that I only worked in the day, but after the chemo he wasn’t able to care for Madeline as much.  The chemo made him very sick.”

“And he was perfectly healthy, as far as you know, before that?” Sherlock asked.

“Well, he had his old injuries, of course, but I don’t remember him ever being sick before that.” she said.

“And how did you come to be employed by him?” Sherlock asked.

“From a friend through his work.” she said.  “Dr. Hübner.  Dr. Hübner’s family has known my family for many years, and he recommended me.”

“And what was Dr. Hübner’s specialty?”

“I’m not exactly sure.  Something like cellular mutation, but that’s probably not perfectly correct.  It’s all too complicated for me.”  

 _Cellular mutation_.  That immediately caught his attention.  Also the fact that they worked in the same research facility.  Sherlock tried to suppress the doubt over Ford’s death.  All this could mean something, but it probably meant nothing.

Sherlock returned to his hotel in Munich and immediately began to research Dr. Hübner.   _Joachim Hübner._  Hübner was a highly respected geneticist with a half dozen technical books and even more articles in scientific journals.  Sherlock read a few of the shorter articles, slowly digesting the very technical information on genetic manipulation, gene splicing and DNA coding.  Hübner was also quite a litigious man, having no less than a dozen lawsuits in place at any one time, and none of them related to his work.  One was for a car accident, another for incomplete work on his roof, another for division of property after his divorce, another for visitation rights to his children and oddly his dog, and one was filed against the state of Bavaria to keep any Biblical theology out of the primary schools.  He was determined to root out any hint of it.  Surely as colleagues and friends, Hübner was well aware of Ford Holmes’ views.  Likely the two had disagreed on occasion and had simply kept their conversations rooted in their research.  Even so, why would Hübner send Birgit to work with a man with whom he was so philosophically opposed?

He recognized, of course, that there was a perfectly legitimate other reason that the men were friends: that perhaps Hübner was using Ford as a test subject in attempt to find a cure for him.  Cancer knew no boundaries by race, religion, creed, philosophy, financial, sex.  It was cancer and had no discriminating taste.  If Ford had been a willing test subject, he had never mentioned it.  Perhaps to do so would be to put Hübner’s career at stake.  Could altruism see beyond personal differences?  Could such a litigious man be willing to potentially ruin his credentials for the sake of a friend?  Sherlock did understand that depth of friendship.  He had ruined his own reputation by jumping off the roof of Barts in order to save John, Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson although it was John who suffered the most.  Even so, Sherlock considered it a highly unlikely scenario between Ford and Hübner.

The following morning he visited his brother’s grave and placed a small bouquet of flowers in the vase that was part of the headstone.  He too was philosophically different than Ford, but he couldn’t deny how much he had grown to love his brother in such a short time.  Ford seemed to have that effect on everyone.  He was well liked with his easy-going temperament, quick humor, and love of life.  

Sherlock knew he was straining to find an answer, but that’s how the entire case was - forcing something that might not be there at all.  It was similar to torture that way: under enough torture, a person might confess to anything even if it wasn’t true just to get the torture to stop.  He was torturing the data, and it was confessing, but was it all a lie?  

Once again he backed off from that tiny suspicion that Ford’s death had been anything but a horrible decline due to cancer.  He kissed his fingers and then touched the headstone, and he returned to England.

While he didn’t want to abandon the Durbin case entirely, he was forthright with the professor on a second visit to Cambridge.  This time he noticed the professor was wearing the Doctor Angelicus pin, but if he’d been wearing it before, it had been hidden.

“Why do you wear an angel pin if you don’t believe in angels?” Sherlock asked.  

“There are a lot of things I don’t believe in.” Durbin smiled.  “Certain comic book superheroes, for example.  That doesn’t stop me from collecting the paraphernalia about them.  My wife has put me on a budget in that regard.  Sorry, my inner geek is showing. ”

“Perfectly alright.” Sherlock said.  “I understand the angel is a scholarly icon anyhow.”  

“Which is odd because angels are not scholars but messengers and fierce warriors.  Theoretically speaking, of course.”

“Of course.”

There followed an awkward silence between the men after which Durbin quietly asked, “You must think me completely nutters.  That’s why you’re here.  To tell me that there was nothing at all suspicious about the deaths.”

“I would never accuse you of paranoia.” Sherlock insisted. “But I have looked at the reports, and I cannot find any motive, any connecting factor that would suggest murder.  I would have come sooner, but I had a bit of a personal crisis.”

“Nothing serious, I hope.”

“Nothing I can’t handle.” Sherlock insisted.  “I also spent a bit of time in Germany just to settle the seed of doubt you placed in my mind over my brother’s death.”

“Oh, Sherlock, I really wasn’t implying his death was connected at all.  I’m so sorry you went to that trouble.”

“No, it was fine.  All fine.” Sherlock said.  “As for the threatening emails, have you received any more?”

“None.  Perhaps someone got wind of the great detective Sherlock Holmes being on the case, and they don’t dare cross you.  You did create a bit of a buzz after you were here the last time, although mostly among the young women.”

Sherlock tugged at his collar a bit.  “Never before has that been such an issue except since the announcement of my engagement.”

“You don’t find the attention of the nation’s women flattering?”

“The press has whipped it into a corybantic fervor.  The irritating attention is unwanted to say the least.” Sherlock said dryly.

“You have become the forbidden fruit, if you’ll excuse the analogy.  Now that they can’t have you, they fancy you even more.”  Durbin laughed a little and clapped Sherlock on the shoulder.  “I do hope you have a wonderful life with her.  She must be quite special.”

“Yes.” Sherlock said, but that was as much as he would divulge, but he quickly changed the subject.  “Professor Durbin, I’m not entirely ending the case but let’s simply put it on hold until something further comes up, and we shall hope it doesn’t.  I can’t assuage your fears, but if any more threatening correspondence should come in, do let me know.  Bullying at any level cannot be tolerated.”

The case, as far as Sherlock was concerned, was mostly done, but privately it was not.  He continued with his own research as he had promised his brother, and somehow he knew the research related to Durbin, the dead scholars and the other living scholars that Sherlock was supposed to meet.  However, in good conscience Sherlock could not continue to leave the case open on such scant evidence, and he took his fee and split it with John.

Mycroft was a little concerned that Sherlock might not be ready to take on the challenge of time with his niece so soon on the heels of his release from rehab and suggested that the child’s visit be postponed to give him more time to find his footing again, but Sherlock insisted that he felt up to the task although he did make full disclosure to her godparents about his recent time in rehab while also assuring them that he had not taken any drugs for over a year.  He also assured them that she would be with her grandparents for much of the time and that she would only be with him for two weekends, both of which would also be in the company of his fiancé.  He was concerned that under the circumstances that they might think it wise for her not to be with him at all until more time had passed, but as part of his rehabilitation, he was determined to be forthcoming with his struggles when necessary.  Because the child would never be in his care alone, except for the brief times between the airports and his parents’ home, they agreed to continue as planned.

Sherlock traveled to France to fetch her and bring her to England, and she shrieked with delight when she met him in the airport, immediately leaving the lap of her godmother, Elle Barrois, and running into his open arms.  He swept her up with a kiss, and she took his face in her hands and studied him carefully.  Her lower lip trembled and big tears filled her eyes.  “You look like my Daddy.  I miss him.”

“Well,” he said, “perhaps that’s why I look like him.  So that you will never forget him.”

She smiled a little, then grinned impishly.  “Did you bring me a present?”

“It’s in England.” he said with a wink. “They wouldn’t let me bring it on the plane.”

He greeted Elle with a kiss to the cheek and said, “Thank you.”

She smiled to him and said, “I emailed your parents her routine and a list of foods she will and won’t eat, but she’s not very fussy that way.  She’s a good girl, aren’t you, Madeline?  You’ll be a good girl for your Uncle Sherlock, yes?”

“Oui, Mamon.” she said.

She and Sherlock flew back to England and before leaving London, she was taken briefly to Mycroft’s home as she would spend her first weekend there.  Sherlock wanted to make certain she was a little familiar with his home and that Mycroft had properly set up a place for her.  Thankfully Mycroft had enlisted Anthea’s sensibilities on the matter, and one of his guest bedrooms was properly converted to appeal to a little girl, including her own television and a complete selection of all Disney DVDs with any princess theme.  There were also various dolls and lots of pinks and pretty little things for the child.  Mycroft still wasn’t entirely certain what he would do with her for 48 hours, but Anthea had supplied a few ideas.  

After the visit to Mycroft’s home, she was immediately driven out to his parents’ home in the Devonshire countryside, and by the time they arrived, she had fallen asleep in her car seat in the back of the rental car.  He gently unbuckled her so as not to wake her, and he lifted her out and carried her into the house where she was immediately put to bed.  Sherlock had agreed to stay the night to help her transition, and he stretched out on the sofa in the sitting room, threw on a blanket, and he was done...until her wails pierced the darkness.  Lights immediately went on through the house, and Sherlock dashed up the stairs to find her sitting up in bed in complete distress.  She didn’t know where she was, and her complete disorientation terrified her.

“Is everything alright?” his father asked.

“It’s fine, Dad.” he said as he scooped her up and held her tightly while rubbing her back to soothe her.

“She didn’t have her supper.  Perhaps she’s hungry.  I’ll make something.” his mother said, and even though it was nearly midnight, she dutifully went down to the kitchen.

All the lights in the house were turned on, and Madeline was walked through the house to familiarize her with her new, temporary surroundings.  She was fed a late night snack and warm milk, and they all stayed up with her a few hours, although she clung  mostly to Sherlock the entire time.  When it was time for her to return to bed, she clung even more tightly to him.  

“Don’t leave me!” she begged.

He tucked her back into bed and then stretched out on top of the bed beside her and thought he would stay with her just until she fell asleep again, but he fell asleep too, and when his mother got up from bed a few hours later to begin the day, she checked on the child and found her son asleep with the girl curled into his chest.  She gently laid a blanket over him and let them sleep.

His gift to her was a goldfish, which they picked out together the following day at a local pet store, but he prefaced it by saying, “This little fish is just a common goldfish, and it probably won’t live very long, but we’ll get you a new goldfish every time you visit.”

“I want a rat.” she said.

“Oh, Babusya will never agree to that.  We’ll start with a goldfish.” Sherlock said firmly.  He purchased a proper small fish tank and all the required elements, and he set it up in what would be her room at his parents’ home for most of the month of August.  It would also serve as a nightlight.  

The goldfish had a white belly and spot by its dorsal fin, and Madeline named it Biscuit, and at the end of her stay, Sherlock would take the fish and all accessories back to 221 Baker Street… if the fish lived that long.

He stayed at his parents’ home for twenty-four hours before leaving Madeline in their capable hands and returning to London, back to his work, back to courting his fiancé.  It would be two weeks before it was his weekend turn with the child, and he had his own preparations to complete.  

On the list of people his brother had left him to meet was a paleontologist, Dr. Kenneth Sims in Dover, a man younger than Sherlock whose lanky, awkward demeanor suggested he spent much of his work alone in the field.  Sims, like Ford, was a Biblical creationist, and Sherlock was chafed to the idea before even meeting him.  Nevertheless he went to Sims’ home in Dover as part of his promise to his brother.  Sims was married with two young, boisterous boys.

“I should let you know that I am not a religious man,” Sherlock said over a cup of Earl Grey.

“But that’s where you’re wrong.  Scientism is a set of beliefs and therefore qualifies as a religion.  You may not have an organized church of sorts, but I would say that you’re a very religious man in that regard. Is that not correct?”

“When you put it in those terms, I suppose.” Sherlock conceded.  

“Everyone believes in something.  Everyone is religious.” Sims said.  “I suspect you simply don’t like the word ‘religion’ applied to you.”

“Not particularly.” he said.

“Oh, you might want to leave your jacket here.”  Sims said.  “Boys, are you ready?”

“Where are we going?” Sherlock asked.

“Fossil hunting.  The tide is out.  It’s the best time.”

His young boys, ages seven and nine, ran in then, each with a plastic pail.

“It’s a bit of a hike down to the beach.” Sims said.  

“And what is the purpose of this hike?” Sherlock asked.  He hadn’t expected that and would have preferred to be wearing trainers for such an expedition.

“Fossil hunting for the boys. Gives my wife some time alone to do her thing.  Between you and me, I haven’t found a new fossil type down there in ages, but the fossils are plentiful and the boys still enjoy the hunt. You and I can talk on the way.”

They drove a mile to a car park near the white cliffs, and from there the paleontologist and the detective walked side by side as the two young Sims boys ran ahead down the path to the beach.  It was a brilliantly clear August day, the sky seeming even more extraordinarily blue against the white chalk of the cliffs.

“Order cannot come from disorder. Certainly you would have to agree with that.” Sims said.  

“Not without a proper housekeeper.” Sherlock quipped.   

“Sarcasm.  You must be nervous. Expecting a ‘come to Jesus’ talk, perhaps?”

“I’m expecting not to be swayed by anything you have to say.” Sherlock said tersely.

“Bugger.  I had hoped we could discuss science, but if you’d rather--”

“No, no.  Do carry on if you keep it to science.” Sherlock insisted, but he also took his phone out of his pocket and scrolled through his pictures until he came to the picture of the angel pin.  “Have you seen this before?”

“Doctor Angelicus.” he said.  “Symbol of that odd little society that tried to recruit me in my early uni days.”

“Society?”

“Truth seekers, they called themselves.  Their fees were a bit high, so I never joined, but they still try to get me in.”

Strange that Durbin hadn’t mentioned being part of a society.  Sherlock wondered if he was or if it was just a common pin for scholars.

“And why don’t you join now?”

“Because I know what the truth is, Mr. Holmes.  I don’t need some geeky little society to prove anything to.  And also, they are still over-priced.  Perhaps you should join, however.  Seems like it might be your bailiwick.”

“Not really the club type.” Sherlock said dryly as they began the stairway descent to the beach.  

Although he had lived in Britain his entire life, he had never been to the beaches of Dover, although these beaches were not sandy but instead rough with crumbled debris from the cliffs - debris that yielded a constant wealth of ancient sea-life fossils.  The two Sims boys immediately ran off to begin searching for finds, but Sherlock’s eyes did not adjust immediately to see what Sims could so easily find.  Sims grabbed up a handful of loose chalk and sorted through it quickly.

“Ah.  Here’s a bit of one.  Not really worth keeping as most of it is missing.” he said.  “We won’t be finding megalodon teeth or anything like that.  Everything is fragmented and small, but it’s in abundance, although finding a really nice, whole specimen is always preferred.”

A recent cliff landslide had left a new debris field, and his ginger-haired boys were already climbing it in search of treasures.  Sherlock almost wished he’d brought Madeline with him as she probably would have liked the treasure hunt too, but she was likely being kept quite entertained on the other side of England at his parents’ home.  Sherlock watched the boys, occasionally hearing a  _thunk_ in their pails as they deposited a find.  They had been taught to be discerning over what made a good fossil, and since they were in such abundance, they could afford to be very choosy.

Sherlock retrieved a handful of chalk bits and sorted through them but found nothing.  A second handful produced a partial fossil.

“An old, chalky fossil isn’t quite like the finds you make in your line of work, is it Mr. Holmes?”

“Much can be observed about the cause of death even in superficial observation of a corpse.” Sherlock said simply, “but I don’t only work on murders although they can be quite interesting.”

Sims search only for a moment before he found a complete ammonite fossil.  He placed it in Sherlock’s hand.  “Tell me what you observe.”

“A small sea creature died and was covered in sediment over hundreds of millions of years and hence a fossil.”

“Hundreds of millions of years can’t be observed.  What do you _observe_?” Sims asked again.  “Because even you must know that under the right conditions a fossil can be made in twenty years.”

That was true.  One of his early cases with Lestrade dealt with an old murder, and the fossilized corpse was found in a limestone cave in Yorkshire, a very modern axe still firmly wedged in the back of the head with the manufacturer’s label of “Made in China” still visible although the wooden handle had almost petrified.  Even so, he chafed at being corrected about “millions of years.”  This was heading the direction of what he considered a completely fruitless and unscientific discussion, and he had zero tolerance for that.

“I suppose I am to say that it is merely a bivalve fossil encased in chalk and add nothing to that.”

“Well done. And how high would you say these cliffs are, Mr. Holmes?”

Sherlock looked up and squinted in the sun.  “At least three hundred feet.”

“Three hundred and fifty to be precise, and sea fossils all throughout.  So how did they get here, so high and exposed except that they were once underwater.  They were underwater and under a great deal of pressure, but that would take an enormous amount of water to apply the pressure needed to create fossils.  And then what happened to the water that would leave these cliffs high and exposed with all their fossils?”  

This discussion was technically out of Sherlock’s expertise, but if Sims was going to dare offer a story of animals going two-by-two into an ark and a great global flood, Sherlock would have none of it.  He had recently read the first ten chapters of Genesis, and that story was fresh in his mind.  “I don’t know.” he finally managed.

Sims grinned.  “Neither do I.  Anything I could offer would be conjecture only.”

“But you don’t believe in hundreds of millions of years.”

“Most certainly not.”

 _Idiot._ The word came instantly to Sherlock’s mind.  Normally he would say it but he restrained himself out of professional respect and because Sims’ children were in earshot. “And where is the science in that?”

“If I could show you with real, hard and irrefutable science how the evolutionary science isn’t anything but a pretender, would you be open to listening, or have you already made up your mind to dismiss anything I have to offer?  Because if the latter is true, there’s no real need for me to continue this, is there?  Let’s not waste either of our times.”

There was a slightly tense stand-off between the two scientists, but it was instantly diffused when the youngest Sims boy ran up with a fossil.  “Dad, look at this one!”

Sims looked it over carefully, then pulled out a jeweler’s loop for a closer look.  “Well done, Josh.  Mr. Holmes, have a look and tell me what you see.”

Sherlock gamely took the piece of chalk and the loop and carefully examined it.  He hoped he was past the obvious and was only being asked to identify the creature.  “Appears to be a partial of some sort of fish although I can’t say which species.”

“See if you can’t find a really nice ammonite specimen or a shark’s tooth for Mr. Holmes to take home for a souvenir.” he said.

The boy eagerly ran off to complete his mission and Sherlock said, “You do understand that we may have to agree to disagree, but please do continue.”

Sims continued all afternoon.  Sherlock listened guardedly at first although he heard nothing unscientific, and in time he began to interject his own thoughts, sometimes to be corrected and sometimes to be agreed with, sometimes simply to probe for further information.  It became a bit like a tennis match.  They had more common ground than he realized.  

He was rewarded for his stay with a nearly perfect 5” ammonite fossil and a few sharks’ teeth of varying sizes, all still imbedded in the chalk.  He liked Sims better than he expected to, and although he was invited to stay for supper, he politely declined with an excuse of needing to return home.  The truth was that he had a meeting to attend, but he didn’t feel the need to divulge that personal information.

After completing his meeting, Sherlock settled in for the night, taking his fossils down to 221C and then returning to 221B to face the wall behind the sofa and its three columns of information.  He wouldn’t say that his scientific views had changed, but he would admit that new and challenging scientific data had been added and that he needed to re-evaluate many areas of perceived scientific thought based on the new data.  He stepped up onto the coffee table, then onto the sofa and pulled a marker out of his dressing gown pocket.  He wrote in the column “Irrefutable Truths:”

SOMETHING CANNOT COME FROM NOTHING

He hesitated a moment over the same column, poised to write, but he had to will himself to do it.

MILLIONS OF YEARS CANNOT BE OBSERVED

He wasn’t keen on the idea that such a statement had made it into the irrefutable truths column, but it was technically true.  Millions of years could be inferred by the data, but a chink had pierced his empirical armor of data, and as such he was nearly ready to tear down all the papers.  Although he had promised his brother on his deathbed that he would investigate Ford’s papers and claims for himself, he regretted the sentiment that led him to such a faulty decision, even though he’d have promised just about anything for Ford.  But Ford was dead.  What difference did it make now to keep a promise to a dead man?  He would have taken on the guardianship of Madeline had he been asked; that would have been a worthy deathbed request.  But no.  He had left Sherlock a puzzle to unravel.  He had left him a list of at least twenty people to meet all in some sort of attempt to prove that which was most unscientific by science standards.  

He was on the path to rebuilding his integrity and trust with those closest to him. He was annoyed with Ford, but yet he could not simply abandon the project, not so soon after leaving rehab.  A promise should be kept or else all would be hollow.  However, as there was no time frame to complete the task, he pulled down all the papers.  He smiled a bit to see the outline of the yellow smiley face he had sprayed on the wallpaper during a day of extreme boredom.  The bullet holes in the wall had occurred later in the same day.  Mrs. Hudson had given him a stern what for about them, and John had also been none too happy to have his personal firearm used so frivolously.  Ah, those were the glory days.

He almost immediately regretted his decision and spent the next several minutes putting the papers back up and trying to repair the damage.  He was not done with the project, not by any means.


	5. Chapter 5

Mycroft and Sherlock each had their niece, Madeline, for two weekends in August.  Mycroft was more adept at his duties than Sherlock would have ever given him credit for.  For starters, Mycroft was a fairly decent cook who simply didn’t have the opportunity or reason to do it since he almost never ate at home.  Most of his meals were taken at the Diogenes Club or at a restaurant.  He kept the child entertained and involved in making beef Wellington (which she didn’t fancy), Yorkshire pudding (she liked somewhat better when dipped generously in gravy or beef juice), and even crepes (which she liked tremendously).  He would never admit it publicly, but he fancied himself as a bit of a chef.  However, since he never entertained at his residence, that was a secret that he kept to himself.  Her second night with him they made their own pizzas, even making the dough from scratch.  She really loved that activity.  He also took her to the park to interact with other children on the playground while he continued his MI6 business via his cell phone and IPad.  Night times involved evening reading out of a children's classic until she fell asleep, and then he retired to his study for a drink and a cigarette and updates on the the affairs of the world.

When it was Sherlock’s weekend turns with his niece, he took her and Molly up to Sparrow’s Nest.  His days with her involved revisiting his childhood by doing basic science  experiments with her, including making a green goo she could play with, showing her how a mixture of plain cornstarch and water could be both solid and liquid simultaneously, and several other child-friendly experiments.  It was hands-on, messy, and worthy of her own apron and goggles, and she loved it.

As agreed to previously, he and Molly had separate sleeping arrangements, but they all spent the first night together on the floor of the sitting room under a makeshift tent in pretend camping while a steady rain beat down outside.  Lightning more than once blinded them followed by a deafening CRACK! and rumble of thunder.  The old stone hearth crackled with a fire, and they roasted frankfurters on sticks and later marshmallows.   The top mattress from his bed was brought down, and Molly and Madeline slept on that while Sherlock slept next to it on pile of sofa cushions on the floor.  The child slept between them, a physical barrier to the rule Molly had set, but during the day they held hands at times or he had a gentle hand on her back.  He missed intimacy with her, but he would remain respectful of her wishes.  Even their kisses had become more chaste.  Neither dared inflame arousal in the other, but on that rainy night, he reached towards her, and their hands met in the light of the hearth.  His musician’s fingers gently touched and caressed her hand.  It was a small moment of quiet intimacy while the child slept between them.

“End of November?” he whispered.

That had always been the logical time to get married as the honeymoon cruise was booked for early December, but they had also discussed getting married sooner although that had been before rehab.  Now he wanted to test the waters again to see where she was with it, if it was still in her sights.

“Shshh.” she comforted gently, and he knew he would have to wait a little longer to regain her full confidence.

Sherlock was also quite adept at keeping Madeline entertained. During the day the child splashed about in the mud and tried to catch frogs from the small pond in back, and he helped her to find and identify various insects.  She was terrified of earthworms, however, and a spaghetti dinner that night was refused as she thought it was worms, and no amount of assurance would convince her otherwise.  She was then served some breaded fish fingers which she happily consumed.  He would have his own cooking lesson with her the following day and teach her about pasta, specifically spaghetti, and then he planned to begin a desensitization with her on worms.  Being afraid of such a harmless creature would not be tolerated.

Two weeks later they were all back at Sparrow’s nest.  Madeline happily slept in the room Sherlock had created for her, Molly took the master bedroom, and Sherlock took the sofa downstairs.  On their second night there, after Madeline had been put to bed, they sat together briefly on the sofa like two young lovers whose chaperone was sitting opposite them.  In a way, it was nice.  The pressures of sexual intimacy had been pushed aside, and they could focus on each other.

“I spoke with Mike Stamford on Friday.” She finally said.

“Oh?  And how is Mike doing these days?” He asked.

“Good.  And he says I can be cleared for holiday starting the end of November.” She said simply, but the corner of her mouth turned up in a half smile as she waited for him to process the information. “With one caveat.”

“He wants an invitation.” Sherlock said.

“In exchange for silence.  Plus he did miss John and Mary’s.” She said.

“At least he sent a telegram.” Sherlock said, but he was humbled by the implications of her words.  “You’re sure then?”  He took her hand and held it firmly.

Although it had been little more than a month since he’d been out of rehab, she knew he’d gone in sober and had come out sober, and she absolutely trusted what she had seen since.  “Oh yes.” She said, and she kissed him tenderly.  “But I think we should still continue with abstinence.”

He growled a little in frustration.  Things were solid between them again but also fragile.   “I understand.” He said.  There was little else he could say.  

She got up then.  “Good night, Sherlock.”

“Good night, Molly.”

Their hands lingered together as if he couldn’t bear to let her go, even until only the very tips of their fingers touched, and then she went upstairs to bed and left him in the quiet of the sitting room.  Alone in the quiet, he suddenly could not contain his grin.  He checked the time.  2230.  He grabbed up his cell phone and immediately texted:

WEDDING IN LATE NOVEMBER.  DETAILS LATER.  SH

The reply came quickly.

ABOUT TIME. HOW CAN I HELP?  MW

Of course Molly had friends at work, even her best friend, Meena, but Sherlock knew that her brothers would be useless in the event planning although her sisters-in-law would undoubtedly want to contribute. For his part, however, he would rely on Mary Watson’s guidance.  She had almost single-handedly put together hers and John’s wedding and reception and had never once lost her temper under the stress. She had gone into the event like a bulldog and managed it all.  Although Sherlock had helped her a bit, he now would need her to help him keep his end of things organized and on track, and if Molly wanted her help, it would no doubt be available.  Mary would immediately put together a list of what needed to be done and how quickly based on the short timeline, and he knew she’d probably start on it that night.  He was half expecting a preliminary email from her first thing in the morning.

His mind immediately began racing, his heartbeat quickened, but he felt true hope for the first time since before going into rehab. He had a renewed sense of life and purpose, and it would be a few hours before he could calm himself enough to sleep.

At the end of August he flew with Madeline back to Paris to return her to the care of her godparents, and although he had enjoyed their time together, he had to admit that he was glad to be free of the duty for another year.  Now that he knew what to expect, he would be better prepared the next time even though he felt it had been fairly successful.  She had called Molly “Aunt Molly” the entire time, and he was hoping that all would go through as planned and that by the same time the following year, she actually would be Aunt Molly.  Biscuit, the goldfish, was brought to 221B, and the tank was set up on the kitchen counter, but he knew that on his next visit to Sparrow’s Nest that the fish would be released into the pond.  He certainly had no desire to care for a common goldfish for a year.

He hadn’t abandoned his case during August and had made inquiries into the society whose emblem was  _Doctor Angelicus_.  It was the symbol for the  _Advancement of Scientific Truth and Enlightenment (ASTE)._   Established in 1925. Their website was nothing spectacular and had a lack of professionalism, like something bare bones put together twenty years before whose style had never been updated.  It didn’t say how many members they had, but it did have a mission statement, something poorly written that purported they were a group of individuals out to examine all science in effort to find real truth in the meaning of life, existence, and the universe.  He immediately surmised that they had no one in IT in their group, they didn’t have a decent writer in the group, and lastly they weren’t terribly concerned about a professional appearance.  Perhaps that was on purpose.  Perhaps that was to ward off those who weren’t serious.  As Sims had mentioned, their fees were high, which naturally would make them exclusive.  Sherlock wondered what the fees actually went for, but they did offer to send a packet of details and literature for a nominal cost which could be paid for via Paypal, and Sherlock paid the small fee and ordered the materials, although he ordered them under his “William Holmes” name in case “Sherlock” aroused any suspicion.

Membership requirements began with a minimum of one PhD in either Mathematics, Chemistry, one of the sciences, or a M.D. in medical research.  This explained to Sherlock why he had never been approached in university.  His degree simply wasn’t high enough.

When the materials arrived which included a DVD, he rang John and asked him to come over and look at everything with him.  Naturally, John was puzzled as to why Sherlock was pursuing a case that he thought was already closed.

“Well, maybe not exactly.” Sherlock admitted as he loaded the CD into his laptop. “We’re just not on the payroll anymore.”

John winced and shook his head slightly.  He never liked it when Sherlock did casework that neither would get paid for as he felt he really didn’t have time for that, but Sherlock was known to get involved in investigations where there was no client but simply a mystery to be solved.  He still worked with Lestrade and still wasn’t paid for his services there either.  “Is this actually going to lead somewhere?” he asked.

“Hard to say.” Sherlock replied.  “Possibly.  I hope so.”

The DVD began to self play, and they both settled back into their chairs in the sitting room and began to watch.  It was something like a documentary, detailing the rise of the organization on the heels of the American Scopes “monkey” trial, and through the years since it had welcomed many scientific luminaries as part of its membership. Or so they said.  Most of the early members had long passed away, and the information wasn’t terribly current, as if it didn’t want to expose its membership, although Sherlock wondered if Durbin was a member.  Certainly it seemed like an old mens’ posh club, and it was remarkably devoid of women.  It did, however, cover a broad range of the sciences.

“Half of the brilliant minds of the last century seem to have been involved with this if we are to believe this paraphernalia.” Sherlock said.  “So why haven’t I ever heard of it before now?  

“Oh, I see what this is really about.” John said.  “You think you and your great mind should be among them.”

Sherlock wrinkled his nose in disdain. “I don’t want to join.”  

“Yes you do.  You’re just pissed off that despite your brain you don’t qualify.” John said.

“You’re a medical professional.  Why don’t you join?”

“Fifty-thousand quid is a bit high for a club that doesn’t interest me.  That’s a good chunk of mortgage.” John said.  “And these guys are a bit out of my league.  Why are you so interested? Oh wait. I know.  You fancy yourself as a serious scientist but haven’t actually made any contributions to science while these guys are out in the field doing great things, making discoveries. You’re jealous.”

Sherlock’s mouth opened in protest, but he didn’t have a snappy retort. “My work is serious!”

“No, you get obsessed about something.  How many types of tobacco ash do you know now?  You think it’s important, but it’s obsessive, especially in a culture where people are giving up smoking.  And let’s not forget microwaving or torching eyeballs; or that bag of thumbs, or the severed head.  What you have is morbid curiosity.  If you want to be taken seriously as a scientist, do serious research and get it published.  Make a name for yourself that way.  You don’t even work on your website anymore.  You know I’m right, so don’t even bother arguing with me.” John said firmly.

“I study details others overlook!” Sherlock said.

“No, you like playing at science but not really doing it.  If it’s not really related to chemistry, you don’t want to go out of your comfort zone.”

Mrs. Hudson rapped on the door frame then with a “woo hoo” as she brought in a tray of cucumber sandwiches.  “All this shouting.  I’m sure I could hear you from the street.  John, you’re not still angry with Sherlock about the drug thing, are you?

“The drug thing?  Mrs. Hudson, we are having a perfectly normal conversation.” John insisted.

“Sounds to me like you’re picking on him just a little bit.” She said.

Sherlock raised his brows and motioned to Mrs. Hudson as if to agree, and John scowled a bit.

“Be good boys and make up.  Come on now.”

She considered them her boys in a way, and although Sherlock could be rude and dismissive, he knew there was a line of disrespect with her that he dared not cross.  John harrumphed a bit and cleared his throat. “Right.  I suppose I could have been a bit gentler that night.”

“Yes, your bedside manner definitely needs work.  Apology accepted. Moving on.” Sherlock said sharply.

“Ah, there!  That’s better!” Mrs. Hudson smiled.  “And John, do stop by my door before you leave.  I have a pressie for you to take home for the baby.”  

She left the two men alone, and Sherlock and John had an awkward moment before Sherlock finally said, “John, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you about the case.”

John crossed his arms.  “I’m listening.”

Sherlock described in detail his deathbed promise to Ford, how that led him to Durbin and then Durbin’s revelation that perhaps Ford’s death wasn’t entirely what it seemed.

“But you closed the case. We’ve been paid.” John said.

“Because I didn’t have anything concrete.  It would have been unethical to continue to collect fees.”

John stood up then and moved closer to Sherlock and looked him directly in the eyes. “But you still believe there’s something to this case, don’t you?  What if he hadn’t ever mentioned your brother?  Would you still think there was something?  Or are you just desperate to find a reason other than cancer for his death?”  John put his hand on Sherlock’s shoulder.  “Everything you’ve ever shared with me about it was tragic and awful, and I am sorry for your loss, but not every death has a murder behind it.  Sometimes people just die, and cancer is an indiscriminate killer.  You were there.  You saw it.  You observed it.  He lived it.”

“What if his cancer was somehow induced?  What if he was slowly being poisoned with something toxic.  A little bit every day until it overtook him?  There are a lot of environmental and chemical things that could cause it.”

“Has Mycroft gotten wind of this?”  
  
Sherlock shook his head.  “I can’t tell him, not unless I have proof.”

“Well short of exhuming your brother’s body, what will it take to once and for all settle it in your mind that he wasn’t murdered?”

“I’m not sure.  Part of me wonders if he suspected and that’s why he put me onto these meetings with all these scientists and geniuses.  Maybe he wanted me to find the clues.  But the other part of me thinks he just wanted to proselytize me and keep me from the gates of Hell.”

“How many more do you need to meet with?”

“A least a half dozen.”

“Who is next on the list?”

John and Sherlock arrived at the British Museum within the hour to meet with Dr. Liala Ebo, the resident Egyptologist on loan from the University of Cairo.  Ebo was around John’s height with long brunette wavy tresses, and when she turned to greet them, Sherlock gasped involuntarily.  She bore a striking resemblance to Irene Adler but without the high fashion and make-up.  Also, Ebo’s eyes were a piercing greenish-brown.  She was like the Irene who had stayed at 221B in his bed, and she was beautiful.  If John noticed the resemblance, he didn’t remark on it.

Of course, it wasn’t Irene.  He had her sequestered safely, and the last he’d heard from her was the single red rose she’d sent to his hospital room after being shot.  A single rose signed only “W.”   _The Woman._ That’s what he had called her and she knew it and liked it.  She still came to his mind on occasion.  Always naked, always trying to seduce when he let his mind wander in that direction.  A small part of him missed Irene.  He could never deny that, but he would never speak of it either.

Liala spoke perfect English but with a heavy Middle Eastern accent.  “I wish you had called sooner.” She said.  “I am surprised you have called at all, but now I have very little time to offer you as I have to be on a plane for Cairo tonight.  I was very sorry to hear about your brother, of course.  I should like to have invited him to one of my dig sites if he had been in better health.”  She wore a museum name and security clearance badge, and in a flash of light, a tiny  _doctor angelicus_  symbol sparkled in gold from beneath the lamination.  A gold membership was the highest level in ASTE.

As they walked through the exhibits, Sherlock asked, “So which Pharaoh was it who supposedly chased the Hebrews to the Red Sea where the waters miraculously parted?”

“The Holy Scriptures do not say his name.” Ebo said. “But the pharaoh you are looking for would either be Amenhotep II or Thutmose III.  The mass exodus of the Hebrews fits within the timelines of their reigns.”

“I thought that pharaoh was drowned with his army.”

“The Holy Scriptures do not say he was drowned.” Ebo added.

“And the Red Sea parting and all of that nonsense?”

“I do not explain miracles, Mr. Holmes.  I suggest you read the latest archaeological news.  They have found chariot parts scattered at the bottom of the Red Sea.  I doubt the wind blew them there.”

“Really?  Wow.” John exclaimed quietly, but Sherlock sighed a little and rolled his eyes.

“Well, I’ve just read the book of Exodus and compared it with Egyptian history, and there is no record of such a historical event anyhow.”

“Because you do not understand ancient Egyptian historians.” Ebo said sharply as they came to a large column from an ancient tomb that had been absconded from Egypt during the late 1800s.  “You see this damage?  One pharoah succeeds another and destroys depictions of his predecessor's face and accomplishments.  They didn’t like their unfavorable history inscribed in stone, so it was either buried by never being mentioned, or a new ruler would desecrate the memory and history of the previous one.  That doesn’t invalidate the Holy Scriptures.  It is, in fact, a practice still used today.  I believe all our governments are capable of burying information to suppress or distort the truth.  I believe the term is ‘wagging the dog.’”  She turned to stare piercingly at Sherlock and John, as if knowing they had a secret.  She couldn’t see his elevated pulse.  It wasn’t that he was attracted to her.  It simply was that the likeness was a bit uncanny.

Magnussen’s death had been covered up, and Sherlock shuffled a bit although John remained  soldier steady.  Ebo leaned in closer to Sherlock and her eyes narrowed.  “That involuntary little twitch on the side of your mouth.  You know exactly what I am talking about, don’t you Mr. Holmes?  I know who you are, and I am only meeting with you to honor your brother.  Otherwise I have no time for your like.”

“His  _like_?” John interjected as he stepped a bit closer to Sherlock to intervene physically if necessary.

“Skeptics.  Naysayers.  I told your brother that it would be a waste of my time to speak with you, but I made a promise.”

“It seems we both made the same imprudent agreement.” Sherlock said tersely.  “But why the chip on your shoulder? Have I offended you in some previous encounter?”

“I have dealt with your type my entire career, and don’t think the cases of Sherlock Holmes fail to go unnoticed even in Egypt.  You think you have all the answers already.   You have closed your mind.  You are unteachable.  I told your brother it would be a waste of time to talk with you.”

“Now hold on!” John protested, but Sherlock held up his hand to silence John while never taking his eyes off Ebo.

Her comment stung him a bit, not in a personal way but because he would have been perfectly happy to go on any archaeological dig and examine the ancient evidence.  That was something he had always desired to do, but she had roundly dismissed him despite the fact that he felt they could have found common scientific ground.

“Tell me, good Doctor, how does an archaeologist who is up to her nostrils in Egyptian sand afford gold membership with ASTE?  I noticed your _Doctor Angelicus_  symbol when we first met.  You are a member, aren’t you?”

Her brow wrinkled in confusion, but she blinked at the question, and that did not go unnoticed by Sherlock.  “Why would you want to ask me about that?  What has that got to do with anything?”

“Why are you evasive?” He asked.

“Do you believe in God, Mr. Holmes?” She asked.

“Which god?  Whose god?  You speak in the singular but many cultures believe in the plural.  The Egyptian gods are dead, the Greek gods are dead, the Roman gods are dead although they merged a bit with Roman Catholicism.  Buddha is dead.  Mayan and Assyrian gods are long gone. Hindus have more gods than I can count.   The  temple of Baal in Palmyra was recently destroyed by ISIS although I hear replicas of the temple gate are being erected in New York City and London next April.  Let the orgies and burnt infant sacrifices begin again!  The Christian God is not the same as the Muslim god or even the Mormon god. Cultures rise and fall and so do their dead gods and dead prophets except for Jesus who managed to rise from the dead, if He ever existed at all. Hardly worth believing in anything so capricious and transitory, don’t you think?”  Sherlock said tersely.  He stood a bit taller and clasped his hands behind his back as if he had said the final, authoritative words on the subject.

There followed a stunning silence for a moment.  He’d said a mouthful, and even John’s mouth hung open for a moment.

“And now who is evasive?” She asked.

John cleared his throat.  He was feeling oddly left out, but he knew this was Sherlock’s personal journey, not his.  Even so, he asked, “Is this leading somewhere?”

She looked at John. “Dr. Watson, as you well know, you can do all you can to coax a patient to better health, but you can’t force them to it.”

“I try to meet them where they are and go from there.” John said. “Perhaps you could do the same?”

Neither she nor Sherlock were willing to move their positions, however.  Finally she sighed a little.  “You want to know about membership in ASTE?”

“What are the fees used for?” Sherlock asked.  “The literature was vague.”

“I could use a coffee.”  She said.  “If you join me, I will answer your questions.  Apparently that is the only thing of real interest to you.”

Sherlock wasn’t certain that his meeting with her would be of any use.  Clearly they would simply butt heads, but for the price of a coffee, he would at least get further information about ASTE, and so the afternoon would not be entirely wasted.

Several minutes later the threesome settled down at a little café table in the museum’s coffee shop.  “In the world of research, it is always about funding.  You do research that generates and encourages funding, not necessarily the research that should be done.  The fees are a bit of a hedge fund to continue with the work that matters regardless of outside funding.  It’s a bit like investing in your own future.  Of course, our research must be published and shared with the world.  We don’t really talk about being in ASTE because it’s seen as elitist and posh, but the truth is that it is free from the influences of corporations or private individuals who have a vested interest in their own path and merely want you to be a conduit.  Pharmaceuticals are the worst offenders.  They have products to sell, and they don’t want to be put out of business by contradictory research.  We are often maligned and not seen as legitimate scientists within the community, so we keep our membership to ourselves.  However, since some of the most brilliant minds on the planet are in ASTE, we are not entirely dismissed.”

“You wear your membership on your name tag.” John said.

“I’m not ashamed of my membership.” She said simply.  Then she looked at Sherlock.  She could read him the way Irene could.  “You are wanting to join, aren’t you?”

“I don’t meet the qualifications.” Sherlock said.  He didn’t really want to join, but he didn’t like the fact that a mind as brilliant as his couldn’t join.

“If you really want to join ASTE, Mr. Holmes, there is one other way if you don’t meet the initial criteria.  You can be grandfathered in on the recommendation of five existing members.  I would suggest, however, that you try not to piss off any of them.  And as to your previous question, one does not purchase a gold membership.  One earns it.  It is awarded by ASTE’s board of directors based on merit.”  She looked at her watch.  “And now I really must head home and pack.  If you’ll excuse me.”

Both men immediately stood up when she did.  She held out her hand to Sherlock, and he took it tentatively in a shake, and she narrowed her eyes at him, and he could feel her gaze pierce right through him like an icy dagger.  “You are looking for something.  I can’t help you, but I know you will find it if you do not give up.  Dr. Watson.”  She quickly shook John’s hand and then turned and walked away.

John turned to Sherlock.  “Did she remind you of anyone?”

“Irene Adler?  Yes. Pity what happened.” John said.

“Yes.” Sherlock said.  He had never told John that Irene was still alive, and he never intended to.  Even though he was attempting to have full honesty and openness in his relationships as part of his addiction recovery, there were some things that needed to remain secret.

Sherlock returned to Baker Street while John returned home, and he checked his watch.  Birgit should be home from work, and he had something to ask her.  He immediately turned on Skype and rang her.  She answered almost immediately.

“Mr. Holmes.  I am surprised.”

“I won’t keep you long.  Just a quick question.  Have you ever seen this symbol?”  He held up a picture of Doctor Angelicus.  “It might have been a small pin my brother wore or it was on his medical ID badge.”

She looked at the picture and shook her head.  “Never.  What is it for?”

“Some little society of scientists and such.  I just seem to keep running into it with the people he asked me to meet, so I thought maybe he might have been a member too.”

Tears filled her eyes.  Talking about Ford was still fresh and painful to her.  “I’m sorry. I loved your brother very much, and I miss him every day.  I wanted to marry him, but he would not marry me because I am not a Christian, but I know he loved me in his own way.”

That was a revelation he wasn’t expecting or desiring. “He was a good man.” Sherlock said.

She struggled with her next words. “Before he went into hospital at the end, I want you to know that I did everything I could for him.  I even slept next to him because he didn’t want to be alone at night.  Nothing happened in bed.  That was as close as I would get to being his wife, and I was happy to do it for him.  I took care of him as best I could.”  She grabbed up a tissue and wiped her eyes, but more tears followed.

He had known Birgit carried a torch for his brother, but he didn’t realize how brightly the torch shone.  Unrequited love was perhaps the most painful love of all.  He had put Molly through that for years.  He was barely passable at knowing the proper recourse for Molly’s tears, and he was generally uncomfortable with the tears of others.  However, he shared a little bond with Birgit regarding his brother.

“He would want you to get on with your life and find happiness.” Sherlock said gently.  “It’s what you must do.  It’s what we all must do.”

“I know, but I know I will never meet anyone like him.” She said.

He didn’t know why he said his next words, but they came out of his mouth before he could censor himself.  “If there’s anything you need…”

She shook her head and tried to smile gamely for him.  “Give Madeline a kiss for me when you see her.”

“Of course.” He said.

Whatever theory he was developing over  _Doctor Anjelicus_  wasn’t quite playing out as he wanted.  He did wonder if the three scholars that had died earlier were members of ASTE, but it was too late to call Professor Durbin.  It was not, however, too late to call Mycroft.  Then again, Sherlock had no boundaries on time.  If he wanted information and thought Mycroft might have it, he had no compunction for awakening his brother.  He texted a copy of the symbol before he called him.

“Of course I’ve seen it before,” Mycroft said simply.  “Mummy has one.”

Sherlock inhaled slowly as he processed the thought _.  That’s_  where he remembered it from.  He wasn’t certain he had seen her wear it because if he had, it had been in his early childhood, and his memories of those days were hazy at best and unreliable at worst.  He had, however, definitely seen the pin in her jewelry box.    “Seems rather out of character for her to spend the money on their fees.”  Although inflation had undoubtedly seen the cost of fees rise, they still would have been quite expensive in the 1960s or whenever it was that she initially joined.  He wasn’t aware of his parents having had that kind of financial fortitude in those days.

“You’ll have to ask her the next time you see her,” Mycroft insisted. “At any rate, I doubt she’s been active with them since she retired, and that’s been a very long time, although I do think she still dabbles in mathematical theories from time to time.  She is a maths genius, you know.”

“Yes, of course I know.” Sherlock said.  He often didn’t give her or his father the intelligence credit they deserved.  Although Sherlock and Mycroft bested their parents’ IQs, they were all members of Mensa.   Mensa was one of the requirements for ASTE.

Sherlock had joined Mensa at age twelve.  He could have joined earlier, but his parents wanted him to be a little older and make the choice for himself instead of forcing it on him.  Mycroft, however, had joined at age six.  He had been fully aware of what he was doing and was eager to join, already an adult thinker in a child’s body.   He had forthrightly and accurately discussed domestic and international policy with the Queen for over an hour on invitation to Buckingham Palace for tea when he was seven.  She had called Mycroft “A most remarkable person.”  Not child.   _Person_.  He had remained friends with the Queen ever since and on occasion still took tea with her.  He considered her a true and trusted friend, and he could only count those on one hand.

At age seven, Sherlock was building pirate hideouts, conducting science experiments, and generally unfocused in his mental acuity.  He was all boy, not a man in a child’s body.  That had grated Mycroft who saw it as his duty to attempt to control in his younger brother’s more spontaneous nature.  Mycoft felt his parents were failing Sherlock’s development and that he should take over the duties, and he was roundly reprimanded by their mother and father.  Even so, he took more interest in Sherlock’s mental  development, reigning in and redirecting what he considered “problem areas,” i.e., emotions.  His own emotions had always been in near perfect control.  Sherlock’s emotions could be catastrophic in consequences.

Before he went to bed that night, he texted Molly:

CHECK THE MUSIC ON YOUR PHONE.  I’VE DOWNLOADED A PIECE BY SAINT SAËNS FOR YOU. I’M LEARNING IT.  SH

He knew her ITunes login and password and regularly downloaded music he hoped she would learn to appreciate.  So far she hadn’t complained of that practice and had tried to be supportive.   She had access to his ITunes account as well and sometimes purchased a piece of music for him that she liked although their music tastes were generally quite different.  Fifteen minutes later she texted back:

WOW.  SEEMS RATHER DIFFICULT. MH

IT’S A CORNERSTONE PIECE FOR COMPETITION AND RECITAL REPERTOIRE. SH

ARE YOU PLANNING ON DOING EITHER? MH

OF COURSE NOT. SH

WELL THEN, PLAY IT FOR ME WHEN YOU’RE READY.  IT’S A LITTLE MELANCHOLY BUT I LIKE IT.  MH

He smiled to himself and sent her a winking emoji.  He planned to have the piece,  _Introduction & Rondo Capriccioso,_ learned by Christmas.  Learned although not mastered.  True mastery of any piece happened over time and with musical maturity.  He had learned it as a young teen, but he had put it aside in favor of other pieces and now was determined to pick it up again and truly master it.

Six weeks later Sherlock was perusing the news online when he came across a small story from Egypt where the tunnel in an archaeological dig site had collapsed trapping several workers inside.  The government was rushing resources to the site, but by the time Sherlock found the article, 48 hours had already transpired.  There, in the bottom of the article was the name Dr. Liala Ebo as one of the missing.  He began a frantic search for an update, hoping to hear that the people had been rescued, but other political news and world events had pushed the story out of the way. 

His Arabic was poor, especially in reading, but hacking into an Egyptian news site and scanning the news brought him more results.  The government was digging, but no one had been recovered yet.  There was a lot of blame shifting between government contractors and Egyptian antiquities as to the safety standards at such sites.  There were pictures of workers outside the tunnel, wailing family members, as it was estimated at least eight people were trapped, and medical teams were on standby.  A dust storm was hampering the efforts.

He removed himself from the news website, careful to cover his tracks, and he sat back with his hands steepled beneath his chin.  Odd.  Was it a coincidence that yet another scientist had met some sort of untoward fate?  He realized she could still be alive, but with every day of no body recovery, her chances of survival grew slimmer.

He rang Professor Durbin to see if he knew Ebo, especially since she was a member of ASTE.  He said he’d seen her name in membership newsletter but didn’t know her personally.  Upon hearing the news, however, he became gravely concerned for her welfare.

Two days later he read that she had been recovered.  She was alive but in extremely critical condition.  Four of her co-workers were not so lucky having been crushed or suffocated under the debris.  If someone had tried to kill her, they had failed and would likely try again, but if it were nothing more than a terrible accident, then that’s all it was, but he felt the need to personally investigate. 

“Need any help with anything in Egypt?” he asked Mycroft over the phone later that day.

“What is your sudden interest in Egypt?” Mycroft asked.

“Just asking.  I’ve never seen the pyramids.” Sherlock insisted, but Mycroft knew the game.

“Sorry, fresh out of Egyptian assignments.  Why not simply take a holiday there with Molly.”

“Not looking for a holiday exactly.”

“Sherlock, what do you need for Egypt?”

“A travel visa for me first thing in the morning.  John also.”

“Anything else?” Mycroft sighed.

“I’ll need a contact with Egyptian Interpol.  Have him meet us at customs at Cairo International Airport.”


	6. Chapter 6

The flight to Cairo was unusually turbulent, especially going over the Alps and when they skimmed over the Jet Stream, but Sherlock and John nevertheless had time to read a few of Dr. Liala Ebo’s published research articles on Hebrew/Jewish presence and influence in ancient Egypt.  Sherlock had printed the articles for convenience, and he had already read them through once, high-lighting bits he thought might be important to the case.  He gave John his highlighted copies in order to focus him on the same bits, and he read through the clean ones, highlighting the same parts again.

“Okay.” John said as he turned the last page and set the papers aside. 

“Did you understand it?” Sherlock asked. 

“Yes.” John said, but he said it in a way that indicated he understood  _some_  of it and that likely he’d skimmed the document because it was boring to him. “I’m interested in archaeology, Sherlock, but only from the comfort of my armchair watching it on the BBC.”

“We’ll only be investigating the site for clues to its collapse.” Sherlock said.

“And the Egyptian authorities are actually going to let us just drop into their country to investigate?”

“When they heard we were coming, they practically threw open the doors.”

“But surely you could have managed this one by yourself.”

Sherlock took a deep, thoughtful breath.  “One last big hurrah before well, you know. I’ll be getting married soon, John.  When you were about to get married, you assured me that we’d still be doing cases together, and we have.  I want you to know the same thing.  Nothing’s going to change that way.”

“I wasn’t worried.” John said. “Are you worried?”

“No.” Sherlock said a little too quickly.

“I mean about getting married.”

“I know what you meant.” Sherlock said, but he wouldn’t go further in that discussion.  Sherlock snapped open the Ebo document again and tried to read it.  He groaned after a few moments and set the document aside again.  “Is Mary your best friend?”

“What?’

“Did you marry your best friend?  Isn’t a wife supposed to be your best friend?”

“Are you asking about me or you?  Because if you’re having serious doubts, you need to break it off now before it goes any further.”

“I’m not having doubts.” He insisted.  “It’s more of unanswered questions.  So is she?”

John hesitated for a bit before answering as he put his thoughts together.  “Yes but in a different way than you and I are best friends.”

“Different how?”

“Well, there’s the obvious.  It’s a more intimate kind of bond.”

Sherlock immediately held up his hand to silence John.  He didn’t want to think about John’s sex life, and if John were headed towards that type of discussion, Sherlock would change the subject. 

“Did you take the occasion to learn any Pashto when you were in Afghanistan?” Sherlock asked.

“Erm…no.” John said.

“Pity.  Never waste an opportunity, John. Try and pick up some Arabic while in Egypt.”

“Shut up.” John said as he snapped open an airline magazine and blocked out his friend.

Sherlock looked out the window.  It was almost completely overcast, vast plains of clouds below them.  He thought for a moment that it looked like an immense field of ice, something that he hoped to witness on his honeymoon.  He was a bit annoyed, however, that he couldn’t see land or the Mediterranean below.

Mary Watson had not been at all keen for her husband to leave for Cairo, especially knowing the scrapes Sherlock could get them into and that Sherlock could be especially anti-social in dealing with police.  “I don’t want to hear of any trouble, Sherlock.  You have to promise me that John comes back alive and in one piece at the scheduled time.”

“We’ll be back within a few days.  Just having a little look-see, nothing more.  Nothing to worry about.” Sherlock insisted.

“Somehow that doesn’t set me at ease.” Mary responded darkly.

The closer they got to Cairo, the clearer the skies became as the desert heat burned the humidity from the atmosphere leaving a dusty haze that stretched as far as they could see.  Due to the recent dust storm, even Cairo’s sprawling city didn’t sparkle as brightly in the sands but seemed covered with a thin, beige film.

As requested, they were met at customs by an Egyptian Interpol officer, Inspector Hanif Nassar who was nearly ten years younger than Sherlock but obviously quite sharp as well as being a bit enamored of being in the famous British detective’s presence.  He was Oxford educated and spoke with a very clipped British accent. Sherlock had hoped for someone older with more authority and experience. “I do not know why you wish to come all the way to our country for such a little incident, Mr. Holmes.  Certainly there is a coal mine collapse somewhere in your country that warrants your undivided attention.”

“Fresh out, I’m afraid, and this is possibly peripherally connected to one of my cases in England.  Dr. Watson and I will want to visit the excavation site and take a look at the evidence, if it hasn’t been totally destroyed already.”

They began to walk through the airport with their baggage.  “When lives are at stake, preserving evidence is not the first priority.   Sometimes one must look for the evidence afterwards.  As you know, four people died, and the other four are in hospital.  None are in good condition.  Do you think it could be murder mystery, Mr. Holmes?  I would so much like to work with you on a murder case! Learn some of your tricks!”

Sherlock groaned and gritted his teeth.  He hoped Nassar would not dog his every step.

“We don’t know that this is anything other that a terrible accident.” John said.  “That’s what we’re here to find out.”

“I understand you know one of the survivors, Mr. Holmes.” Nassar said. 

 _Know_  was too strong a word.  “Friend of the family.” Sherlock said quickly.  That was closer to the truth as she had been a colleague and acquaintance of Ford Holmes. 

“I will escort you where ever you need to go.  But do not mistake me for a chauffeur or a tour guide as I am neither.  Will you require military or police escort while here?”

“What?  No.  Of course not.  Just wanted to get through customs faster, and you’ve been most helpful that way.” Sherlock said. 

“Don’t mind him.  He hates waiting in line.” John said.

Even so, Nassar’s comment made Sherlock sense Mycroft’s guarding influence all the way from Britain.  After all, Sherlock was a sometimes covert MI6 operative, and there was always the chance the Egyptian government could perceive him as a spy if they found out.  Sherlock turned to Nassar.  “You do know how to use that thing, don’t you?” Sherlock cast a glance at Nassar’s jacket.  The slight bulge on the left side was evidence of a concealed weapon, likely a military grade pistol. 

“When I was in the army, I once killed three insurgents with one bullet. Blew a gaping hole right through all of them.”

“Should we be anticipating insurgents?”

“One must always be prepared.”

It wasn’t at all uncommon to see military presence or assault rifles even in the airport, something they never would see at Heathrow to which Sherlock turned to John and said.  “Don’t you dare quote from The Wizard of Oz.”

“I wasn’t going to say it.” John insisted.

“But you were thinking it.”

It was true.  Thankfully there were enough signs in English for them to navigate the airport even if they weren’t with Nassar, but the Arabic all around them was completely unintelligible to John although Sherlock understood a bit.

Neither Sherlock nor John had ever been to Cairo and weren’t quite sure what to expect, but they were not expecting the modern, bustling metropolis that awaited them.  The large, familiar hotel chains, the global fast food franchises, the countless tourist shops and open markets and bazaars.  And everywhere, on everything, the sand – sand that left unchecked would eventually bury Cairo.  It was relentless, never stopping, the endless grit in the lens of Egyptian life.  The fall colors were blanketing the landscape back in Britain, but in Egypt everything was still green, and John for one would never tire of seeing palm trees.  When they had first arrived at their hotel, the first thing John had done on exiting the vehicle was to walk over to one of the many palm trees that lined the driveway and pat its trunk, just to feel it. 

They were booked into a comfortable 2-room suite that overlooked the hotel’s luxurious swimming pool. Its sparkling blue water looked wonderfully inviting.  “We’re not here on holiday, John.” Sherlock reminded him.

“Sod off. If I want to have a swim, I’ll have a swim, and I didn’t agree to come all this way and not get to see a few things.” John countered.  “I’m all turned around.  Which direction are the pyramids?”

“Other side of the hotel.” Sherlock said.  “Not that you’d be able to see them from here anyhow, but we may get a glimpse of them tomorrow.”

Their first order of business the following day was to visit Liala Ebo at Cairo University Hospital which was only a few miles away from their hotel.  Nassar picked them up after 10:00 and drove them directly to the hospital despite his earlier protests that he was not their chauffeur.  They stopped in the hospital’s gift shop and purchased some flowers, and then with some navigation instructions made their way to her hospital room on the fourth floor. 

Sherlock and John were not prepared to see the full extent of her injuries.  Both legs were broken.  They couldn’t see it, but her pelvis was also broken, and she had a lacerated spleen, severe abdominal contusions, four broken ribs and bashed hands, a broken clavicle, cracked skull and countless facial wounds including a broken nose.  She was bandaged nearly from head to toe, and she could not move very much, but she was surprisingly lucid despite being high on morphine. 

Sherlock touched her heavily bandaged hand gently.  She opened her blackened, swollen eyes, barely able to see him.  Although she had once reminded him of Irene Adler, she would likely never look like that again, and there was no resemblance to the person they’d met at the British Museum except for the color of her irises. “Mr. Holmes?”  Her voice was barely a whisper. She looked at John and then at Nassar whom she didn’t know at all.

“This is Inspector Nassar with Interpol.  He’s helping Dr. Watson and I navigate Cairo.”

Nassar nodded to Ebo but didn’t say anything.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“Dr. Watson and I heard what happened, and we came to investigate the incident.” He said simply, and he set the vase of beautiful flowers on a table near her bed.  “These are for you.”

John cleared his throat a bit.   _Not good, Sherlock._  

“How are you feeling?” Sherlock asked.  Empathy and sympathy were never his first response in a trauma situation, and although he was better at it, he had a long way to go.

“I am alive.” She replied. “Nice flowers.  Thank you.”

“Do you feel up to answering a few questions?” John asked.

“I’ve already told the Ministry of Antiquities and the police everything I know.” She said.  “Did you talk to them?”

“I’d like to hear it for myself.” Sherlock insisted.

“If Sherlock starts going on too long and you get tired, just let me know and we’ll let you get back to your rest.” John said.

Sherlock scowled briefly at John but then pulled up a chair on one side and John on the other, but Nassar remained standing.  He was very attentive on watching how Sherlock operated.  Since he had no vested interest in the case, he had no questions to ask. 

“What was important about that particular dig?” Sherlock asked.  “What did you see when you went into the tunnel?”

“Most excavations are not that remarkable because grave robbers have been there centuries or even millennia before we ever arrived.” She said.

“Do you think there are any great treasures left to be found?” John asked.

“The sands may shift and uncover something new.  One never knows, but I’m not looking for treasure, Dr. Watson.  I am looking for history.  That is treasure in itself.”

“And did you find history in the tunnels?” Sherlock asked.

She hesitated before she answered, as if she shouldn’t answer that at all. “The hieroglyphs were in poor condition, but some could be made out.”  Again there was a pause.  Clearly she was hesitant to say what she saw.  She spoke her next words quietly. “The Nile was turned to blood.”

Both Sherlock and John sat up a little straighter and the hairs on the back of Sherlock’s neck tingled and sent an unwelcome shiver down his spine.  “As in Moses turning the Nile to blood?”

“Seven of the infamous ten plagues were in hieroglyphs.  Three had been badly damaged or destroyed including the death of the first born on the evening of the first Passover.  When or how they were destroyed I do not know, but it was a very long time ago.  Historically, it is more important than all the riches of Tutankhamen.  I was not expecting such a thing.  Most hieroglyphs are about ordinary life or worship of the old gods.”

“And did you tell anyone about your findings?” Sherlock asked.

“Of course.  Egyptian Antiquities Affairs controls and monitors all digs.  Everything goes through them and is reported back to them.  They are rightfully very protective and possessive of their cultural heritage.  Many pictures were taken.  Then a few days later the tunnel collapsed.”

“Do you remember any noise before the collapse?” Sherlock asked.

“There were groans and cracks, but that can be normal.  Then there was a loud roar, and the ceiling and walls began to collapse.   So much dust.  It was choking.  I was sure I would suffocate from that.”  Tears filled her eyes, and she struggled for painful breath with four broken ribs.  “My torchlight stayed on for several hours, but there was death all around me.  My colleague, Dr. Fasil, was crushed, and I could see him.  There was nothing I could do.  And then the light went out, and I was still trapped next to dead bodies.  I was panicking.  I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t get enough air, and I couldn’t get away.  I was sure I would die a slow and painful death all alone. I was so frightened.”

“Easy.  Take it easy.” John said gently.  “Take some calm breaths.”

They gave her a few moments to recover her composure, and John brought a cup with a straw to her lips so that she could take a sip of juice.  That exhausted her.  She closed her eyes.  “And then I saw it.”

“Saw what?” Sherlock asked.

“Light.  Light so bright you couldn’t look directly at it, and I was filled with calm.  I thought I must be dying.  You’ve heard how people dying sometimes see a light?  But it wasn’t like that for me.  It stayed with me, and I was not afraid anymore.   I couldn’t smell the dust. I smelled roses.  A very strong smell.  It covered the smell of death and blood. I slept some and it was still there when I awoke, and even my pain was tolerable.  As soon as the light from outside reached me, the other light was gone.”

“You were likely hallucinating.” Sherlock said.  “Dehydrated, in pain and shock.  The mind can play many tricks.”

“No.” she said firmly, “I know what I saw. It was an angel.”

“An angel.” John said incredulously, but Nassar choked at the word.

“It told me that it wasn’t my time and that help was coming.”

“John.  Inspector.  Could you give us a moment, please?” Sherlock asked.  John squinted in confusion but then left the room and shut the door with Nassar close behind, and Sherlock turned his attention back to Ebo and pulled his chair closer.  “William Blake said that the man who never alters his opinion is like standing water and breeds reptiles of the mind. I don’t want to come across as that man or ever be that man.”

“Why are you saying this?”

“Because we got off to a bad start, and I think we could have found common ground.” He said.  “But I am an arse and the first to admit it.  My brother was very special, and I’m pissing on the promise I made, which I shall endeavor to stop doing.  I’ve read some of your work.  It is well written and thought-provoking, but I need to know if there is someone who might want to permanently silence you?”

Sherlock saw the flash of fear in her eyes.  It was a brief micro-expression on her swollen face as she glanced towards the ceiling corner of the room.  Sherlock turned and looked up at the camera.  Whether it was security or observational, he didn’t know, but it clearly bothered her.  “No one likes their version of the truth challenged with new evidence especially when it involves deeply held religious beliefs.”

“I understand.” He said.

“No!” she said with as much vehemence as her pain could muster. “You understand nothing.  You might believe one thing and it is true to you, and I believe something opposite that is true to me, but our own truths are meaningless if new truth comes to light.  There is absolute truth despite what anyone believes.  Egypt is a land of deeply fundamental beliefs and rich history.  To challenge them is to possibly put your neck out for the sword, and that’s not a euphemism.”  She took a painful breath.  “ASTE members search for absolute truth.  We try to put aside our personal biases and inclinations, education and beliefs and to look for truth.  That is what you must do too.  You must always be open and teachable.”  She coughed slightly which was extremely painful for her, and it took her a few moments to regain her composure. “I do not have specific enemies, Mr. Holmes, but I am sometimes badly maligned within my own scientific circles.  There are many obstacles by the government and minister of antiquities towards what I do.  Every permit and every paper I write must be approved by them.  I tried to publish once without their approval and they threatened to ban me from my life’s work here in Egypt.”

“Must make it difficult for absolute truth.”

“They get their version.  I keep mine. I believe they will lay the blame on me and end my career here.  They have been looking for a way.  Nevertheless, I believe what happened was a terrible accident, and I feel very responsible for the loss of my team members.”  Tears instantly spilled from her eyes, and she was unable to move to get a tissue. 

Sherlock immediately pulled out a few tissues and dabbed her eyes for her. “It’s not your fault what happened.” He tried to assure her.  He wanted to give her a small touch of comfort, but he didn’t know where she didn’t hurt.  “The next time you come to England, I hope you will allow me to buy you a coffee.”

“It will be a long time before I return to England.  I don’t even know if I will ever walk again.” She said.  Her tears began again, and Sherlock was saved from his awkward attempts to help when a nurse came into the room. 

“She needs her rest, sir.  You’ll have to leave now.”

Sherlock stumbled with his next words.  “Yes.  Well, get better soon and all that.  We’ll try to stop by again before we leave.” He said and then he turned and walked out of the room.  He wasn’t good with sentimental goodbyes, but he regretted not being able to say something somewhat comforting and caring.  Somehow the words would not come out of his mouth.

Sherlock walked out of the room and into the hallway where John and Nassar were waiting for him. 

“Everything all right in there?” John asked.

“Just making amends, John.” Sherlock said simply.

“Amends?” Nassar asked.

“He was a bit rude and dismissive when they first met.” John said. 

“Classic Holmes.” Nassar said. “Wonderful.”

Sherlock scowled again and began to walk down the hallway without them.

As Sherlock, John and Nassar walked towards Nassar’s waiting vehicle in the hospital’s carpark, Sherlock turned to Nassar and said, “As soon as she is stable, get her over to England.”

“Do you think she’s in danger here, Mr. Holmes?” Nassar asked.

“Oh I have no doubt of it.” Sherlock said.  “You should probably have a guard assigned to her room.”

“Then you think someone tried to murder her?” John asked.

“Need to see the evidence at the site first or at least what’s left of it, but Antiquities won’t meet with us until tomorrow. Shame.  Well, John, you can have your swim after all.”

“Sod you.  I’m going to see the pyramids.” John said.  “Are you joining me or not?”

John and Sherlock spent a few hours that day visiting the Great Pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx, and other neighboring attractions.  John looked every bit the proper tourist with an expensive camera around his neck, and Sherlock took a few token pictures with his cell phone, but in general he was quite bored.  Bored, that is, until John brought up the subject of Ebo having seen an angel.

“Yes, but if there were such a thing as angels, and they’ve got some sort of supernatural powers, why didn’t it just pull her out? Hmm?  Why leave her there to suffer?  Very fickle these angel beings.  They save one person from danger but not the next.” Sherlock said as they stood in the shadow of the Sphinx among a bus load of tourists, all Japanese. 

“They say there are no atheists in foxholes.” John said.

“You don’t actually believe in such things, do you?  Do you?” Sherlock asked.

John shrugged a little.  “Not everything can be explained away.”

“Yes, it can.” Sherlock said firmly.  “The woman has a concussion, likely blood clots on the brain possibly giving her visual sensations like auras and bright spots.”

“But she said it disappeared as soon as she was rescued.”

“I’m not doubting she saw it, John.  I’m only doubting what she claimed it to be.”

“And I’m not willing to discount miracles.  That’s all I’m saying.”

“Didn’t really think you were the miracle type.”

John was quiet for a moment but then said, “You came back from the dead.”

“That wasn’t a miracle.”

“Maybe not for you, but it was to me.” John said.

Sherlock had no response for that.  It had long ceased to be a sore subject between the two friends, but it always carried a little pain with it for John, and Sherlock had learned to be respectful of the trauma he had put John through.  He would not argue John’s “miracle.”

“And trust me, mate, when you someday hold your first child, you’ll know that a miracle happened that made that child.  Doesn’t matter how much science you know.  That a child grew from the merging of two sets of DNA inside the mother like that is a miracle. It just is.  Science can’t answer why some of the dividing cells go off to be heart cells or brains or toes.  Nope.  Science has no idea how it’s programmed to do that, and science never will.”

“I concede.” Sherlock sighed.  He still didn’t believe in supernatural miracles, but he did leave room for miraculous scientific phenomenon.   There were indeed things that couldn’t be explained.  They could only be theorized, and sometimes even that wasn’t good enough.  “Do you believe in God?”

The question caught John off-guard a bit.  Although he had a Catholic background, Sherlock had never known John to attend church or talk about it except for a few incidents in private school where he got into a bit of mischievous trouble.  John knew that Sherlock was almost vehemently against the idea of any kind of god, and perhaps that was why they hadn’t ever really discussed it.  Sherlock simply would have blocked it with science.

“Are you asking to start a philosophical argument or to belittle me?”

“Nevermind.” Sherlock said grimly. “Forget I said anything.”  The two men were silent for a moment.  “But do you?”

John growled a bit, but he sensed an earnest question on Sherlock.  “Do I think there’s something that holds the universe together that is beyond science?  Have I ever prayed?  Do I think there’s a power out there greater than me? Yes to all.  There.  I’ve said it.  I know you don’t feel the same way, so we don’t need to discuss it anymore.”

“Okay, then.” Sherlock said.  “Just asking.”  Sherlock checked his watch.  “Ah look!  We’ve been here fifteen minutes.  Time to move on.  Nothing else to see here.  And I think I’ve got sand in places I didn’t think sand could get to.”

They returned to their hotel, and while John took advantage of the hotel’s pool, Sherlock took a few moments by himself to text Molly from his satellite cell phone with pictures of their day.

BRING ME SOMETHING. MH

GIVE ME A CLUE. SH

NOT SOMETHING DUTY-FREE FROM THE AIRPORT. MH

Sherlock groaned at the idea.  His brain immediately went blank for ideas, but he hurried down to the shops in the hotel, stopping first by the concierge for ideas.  He found himself in an upscale clothing shop where he finally picked out a lovely aubergine silk scarf embroidered with gold-threaded Egyptian motifs.  He had it gift-wrapped and then returned to his suite.  When John saw the gift-wrapped box, he again swore at him.  “You sod!”  He immediately left the suite to buy gifts for Mary and his little daughter.

Nassar picked them up outside their hotel early the following morning, drove them through Cairo, then Giza, and about a mile east of the Great Pyramids into the desert.  Even from a mile away, the pyramids were still formidable.  Sherlock turned up the collar on his Belstaff against the early chill air, but he would shed the coat later as the temperature rose.  John turned up the collar on his coat as well.

The excavation site was cordoned off with police tape in Arabic and had two Egyptian police keeping guard.  Remnants of the tracks of heavy earth-moving equipment were mostly visible still in the sand but were losing their definition with each passing day.  Although the tunnel was cleared, there were “danger” sign warnings in Arabic posted near it, and heaps of rubble were near the opening. 

A sleek black car pulled up within moments, and a tall man in sunglasses and dark tailored suit stepped out and approached Sherlock and John.  “You must be the famous Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson.” He said. 

“And you are?” Sherlock asked. 

“Khaled Khalfani.  I’m from the Office of Antiquities.”  He showed his identification, but it was in Arabic, although Sherlock could read some of it.

Two other men stepped out of the car, and both were also in suits and sunglasses and not so obviously concealing holstered weapons on their hips.

“Yes, we were expecting you.” Sherlock said. “Thank you for agreeing to allow us to visit the site.”

“Well, obviously we can’t just allow foreigners come and poke around our sites simply because they want to.”  He wasn’t smiling and definitely wasn’t welcoming to the idea.  “Please explain to me why it is that you feel the need to involve yourself in our business?”

Sherlock knew that Khalfani had already been briefed and was now simply playing hard ball, but he didn’t want to place too much emphasis on this piece of a potential puzzle. “I have a few cases in England that I am attempting to tie together, something that I’m trying to prove.  Trust me, it has nothing to do with archeology.  I don’t know if I’ll find anything that will help, but I have to set my mind at ease.”

“What are you looking for?”

“I need to know if it was an accident or if it was sabotage.”

“Why would we ever want to sabotage one of our own sites?  That would not be in our best interests, and this dig is fairly new.  Just a small tomb.  We had not even announced its discovery to the world until this accident occurred.” 

“We don’t wish to get in your way at all.” John interjected.  “We may, however, be able to help you figure out what happened.  It’s not really normal for tunnels to collapse, is it?”

“And what would you know about tunnels, Dr. Watson?” Khalfani asked.

“Spent some time in Afghanistan in the army. Lots of tunnels there. Generally quite well built.  Same in Iraq, Gaza.  Of course, I realize this tomb is quite old, but look at the pyramids.  They’re still standing.  The Egyptian architects were geniuses.  So perhaps we can have a look and give you our professional opinion.” John said.

Khalfani took a deep breath.  His reluctance was evident and palpable.  “Please understand that I cannot guarantee your safety.  Some shoring up of the walls and ceiling has been done but it may still be  unstable.  Do not touch anything, and try to be quick.”

“I assure you, it won’t take long.  We’ll start with the rubble.”

The first thing that Sherlock and John examined, however,  were the piles of rubble dug out from the tunnel.  Sherlock pulled out his small magnifying glass and examined the larger bits of broken stone work.  Was it age that caused the collapse or some other incendiary device? Occasionally he would spot a bit of hieroglyph, and that was exciting, but it was like finding a single puzzle piece.  It meant little to nothing out of context.  It reminded him of finding partial fossils in Dover.  The rubble scan lasted only a few minutes, even though Sherlock knew within seconds that the collapse was not from natural means.

They descended the ancient steps that were never meant to be trod in modern shoes, and all had to be careful not to lose their footing on the shallow but steep steps as they descended into the tunnel, Sherlock leading the way with his small but powerful torchlight.  His light scanned the shattered walls and ceiling for clues. A rough wooden framework bolstered the remnants of the walls and ceiling, and they creaked and groaned occasionally which made all of them a bit jittery. 

John also turned on his torchlight, but there was still quite a bit of dust in the still air, and their visibility wasn’t clear.  Sherlock turned to John.  “Turn off your light.”  When John turned off his light, Sherlock also turned off his light, plunging them all into a nearly inky blackness.  Sherlock pulled out his little black light and turned it on.  There were little blue dust sparkles everywhere, even in the air they were breathing.  It was on their clothes, and it was especially on their shoes and the hems of their trousers.  They could see their own footprints in the dust.

“What is this stuff?” John asked as he instinctively pulled his shirt collar up to cover his mouth and nose. 

“Residue.” Sherlock said. 

“Some sort of explosive residue?” Nassar asked.

“Possibly.”  Sherlock said.  “It’s certainly not pixie dust.”

The dust cloud within the tunnel due to the collapse had covered nearly the entire length of the tunnel, although at the furthest end it was lesser. 

“Do you smell that?” John asked.

They all stopped immediately and took a whiff of the air.

“It smells like fresh roses.” Khalfani said. “How is that possible?”

“Dr. Ebo said she smelled roses.” John said.

“I’m certain there’s a perfectly logical explanation.” Sherlock insisted, but he could smell it too.  It was as if someone perfumed with roses had just walked through the tunnel and left a scent trail.  Sherlock took a step closer to Nassar and Khalfani and sniffed their colognes.  Definitely not roses.  He turned on his torchlight again.

“Could the scent be part of an explosive?” John asked.

“We do not know that there is evidence for explosives.” Khalfani insisted.

“I do remember reading an article on visual detection of trace nitroaromatic explosive residue using photoluminescent metallole-containing polymers.” Sherlock said.

They all looked at Sherlock as if he’d spoken a language completely foreign to all of them, which in a way, he had. 

“Do you think it’s poisonous?  Hallucinogenic?” John asked, and Nassar and Khalfani instinctively covered their mouths and noses as well.  Sherlock’s torchlight scanned the ancient hieroglyphs on the remaining walls, but he saw nothing of what Ebo had described.  “John, do you see it?”

“See what?” John asked.

“Exactly.” Sherlock said, but he didn’t elaborate.  “The hieroglyphs that Dr. Ebo described are not here. The question, Mr. Khalfani, is why would someone want to sabotage her work?  You know precisely what was here and what now isn’t.”

“I know what she claimed to be here, but I’m afraid I never saw what she so desperately wanted to believe.  This is an unremarkable tomb.  It was apparently abandoned before completion and never used. The hieroglyphs were unremarkable and as incomplete as the entire tomb.” Khalfani said.“

A loud CRACK! Startled all of them, and that was enough to entice them all to leave, and once they were out in the sun again, Sherlock said, “I am quite certain that there are photographic records of her find before the collapse. Perhaps I could take a look at them at offer my opinion.”

“I’m afraid not.  All her research is property of the Ministry of Antiquities.” 

“If they are evidence, they can be requisitioned.” Nassar said.

Khalfani didn’t flinch, but he cocked a half smile.  “Do not threaten me, Inspector.  My office outranks your office, and we do not answer to the police.” He turned his attention to Sherlock and John.  “This visit was allowed as a courtesy because of your reputation, but this visit is over, and I will kindly ask you to leave the premises now.”

“I’ve seen all I need to see.” Sherlock said.  “It was obvious within thirty seconds just from the rubble.”

“And did it help your case?” Khalfani asked.

“Maybe.  Not sure what it means, however.  Thank you very much for your assistance.”

“Thank you.” John said also, and he and Sherlock got back into the car with Nassar and drove off.

“Do you really think it was sabotage, Mr. Holmes?” Nassar asked.

“You don’t get that kind of debris without explosives.  That tunnel was never designed to crumble on its own. In fact, I doubt that was even possible.”

“So it was murder then.” Nassar said.

“It is not possible to say that murder was planned, but it is possible to say that murder occurred.” Sherlock said.

When they arrived back at their hotel, they were surprised to find several Egyptian police vehicles at the front, and they immediately approached Sherlock, John and Nassar who all exited their vehicle with their hands slightly raised although no weapons were specifically pointed at them. Nassar flashed his Interpol badge at the five policemen that met them.   _“What is the meaning of this?”_  he asked in Arabic. 

“Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson will come with us.” The main policeman said in broken English.

“Are we under arrest?” John asked.

“You will come with us.” Was reiterated, and to Nassar, “You may go.”

“These men have done nothing wrong.” Nassar said.

The back door to a police vehicle was opened, and Sherlock and John were motioned towards it. “You will please get into the car.  Now.”

“Shall we go for a ride, John?” Sherlock said, and he climbed into the back of the vehicle followed quickly by John.  “We’ve not been hand-cuffed, so I don’t think we’re being arrested.” He said very quietly.

They were taken to the nearby police station which in many respects bore resemblance to New Scotland Yard’s offices except with less budget. Policemen who had heard of Sherlock gasped and stood up immediately at their desks, one even saluting him.   Ripples of “Sherlock Holmes!” were heard throughout the main room, and a few of the men looked a little terrified.

Sherlock and John followed their leader into a secure interrogation room.

“Sherlock, what is going on?” John muttered beneath his breath.

Sherlock motioned him silent as they each sat down in a chair on one side of the table.  Sherlock pulled off his gloves and stuffed them in his pocket.  He wasn’t terribly anxious, but he didn’t like this turn of events.

Within a few minutes, the police chief came into the room flanked by two armed policemen, and he sat down on the opposite side of the table. He leaned forward a bit and stared hard at them.

“Exactly why did you come to Egypt, Mr. Holmes?  It seems a bit far for one of your cases.”

“I thought you said they threw open the doors for us.” John said.

“May have oversold that point.” Sherlock admitted.

“Threw open the doors?  For the English?  Perhaps you have forgotten how your country robbed our country of millions of mummies in the 19thcentury and ground many of them into tea.  Or you have forgotten the artifacts absconded from the Valley of the Kings which sit in your museums.”

“I assure you we have no interest in mummies or artifacts.  We are only here to investigate the collapse of the excavation site.  Might relate to a case back home.  Nothing more.”

“And yet here you are.” He said. 

“And why is it that we are here?” John asked bluntly.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson, but we must confiscate the clothing you are wearing.”

“What for?” Sherlock asked calmly although he had an inkling of an idea.

“We cannot allow you to leave Egypt with any evidence from our investigation.”

“We didn’t take anything from the site.” John said.

“Except the sand on your shoes and the dust on your clothes from the site, and we cannot allow you to leave the country with any of it.”  Military fatigues were placed on the table in front of them.  “You will change your clothes now, and then you we will take you back to your hotel where you will retrieve your other belongings, and then we will escort you directly to customs at the airport.”

“Camouflage really isn’t my color palette.” Sherlock said.

“Shut up, Sherlock.” John said under his breath.

The police chief leaned forward slightly.  “Perhaps you would understand better if I had you arrested for trying to leave the country with stolen goods and interfering with an ongoing investigation.”

Several deductions about the man immediately came to his mind, but as the police chief was flanked by two policemen with assault rifles, he wisely held his tongue.  “Where do we change?”

After they had changed, they were driven directly back to their hotel, as they had been told, and two policemen waited while they quickly repacked their suitcases.  They were then taken directly to the airport and escorted to customs.  As the next plane available to return them to England was not scheduled to leave for twelve hours, they were placed into customs detention where they were photographed, patted down, fingerprinted, and then given coffee and a sandwich and told to settle in for the wait.  They could not leave the customs hold as they were locked into a secure, large waiting room.  An Arabic television station ran a 30-minute loop of news that quickly grew monotonous.  They were allowed nothing personal while in hold.

“Mary will not be happy with you about this.” John said. “She may actually kill you this time, and I might actually help.”

“I’ll likely get an earful from Mycroft now that Interpol has me fingerprinted.  And you’re a grown man.  Why don’t you stand up to her about stuff like this?”

“You are a complete ignoramus when it comes to how things work in marriage.  Buckle up, buttercup. You’re not going to be in charge anymore.”

“You and Mary never went through pre-marital counseling.  No.  Just lived together and then made it official.  Counseling might have helped a bit.  That’s all I’m saying.”

“You’re an idiot.” John said.

The two men went silent for a bit, but then Sherlock started to giggle.  It always amused him when John called him an idiot because it was a strangely endearing term between them.  It wasn’t long before John also giggled a bit, and soon they were laughing uncontrollably until both had tears running down their cheeks.  Their laughter was so infectious that others in customs detention also began to laugh.  Even the two armed guards laughed. 

People came and went in customs hold while Sherlock and John waited, and when it was time for them to leave, they were escorted by armed guards to their plane.  Their passports were held by the flight crew until they landed again at Heathrow, and both men would have admitted they were glad to be on home soil again, but they kept their thoughts to themselves.  

Anthea met them at customs and rushed them through to the outside where Mycroft was waiting in his car.  He took one look at their unusual attire and said, “I’m not sure I want to ask.”

“Clearly you know already which is why you were here to meet us.” Sherlock said dryly.

“So is there anything you two would like to tell me?”

“We’re not wearing any pants.” John said with a straight face. 

Sherlock sniggered and John was not far behind, but Mycroft only rolled his eyes.

“Still haven’t grown up.  And you haven’t bathed either.”  He rolled down his window and opened the sun roof to let in some fresh air. 

Sherlock suddenly realized the obvious.  No, they hadn’t bathed.  Evidence was likely still on their bodies somewhere, especially in their hair.  “Take us to Baker Street at once!  John, we have work to do!”


	7. Chapter 7

Sherlock’s greatest annoyance in returning from Egypt was that he had lost possession of his Belstaff coat.  It wasn’t that he didn’t have another one, but it was the principle of the matter.  Whatever dust particles that were on the coat and his and John’s clothing was an absurd reason to detain them, force them to change, and usher them out of the country.  He didn’t know if he could get the clothing returned, and he certainly was not going to ask Mycroft to help with what would be deemed as a trifling issue.  Somehow, however, he would get that coat back.  Belstaff wasn’t making that design anymore, and he was sentimentally attached to it.

When he and John were taken to 221B after being picked up from Heathrow, Sherlock didn’t bother to go upstairs to his flat.  He dropped his suitcases at the base of the stairs, as did John, and he hurried them both down to 221C which had been remodeled to become his laboratory.  He flicked on the lights and shut and locked the door, then covered the windows with dark shades to block out any incoming light. 

“Have a seat, John.  No, not there.  There.” He pointed to a metal stool in front of his microscope.  He rummaged through a few drawers in a cabinet and swore under his breath, then remembered where he had stashed what he needed and opened a cupboard and removed a small black light.  He turned on his computer and microscope.

“Sherlock, we already know it was some sort of explosive.”

“Yes, but what kind exactly?  Might tell us something about the bomber.”

“So now we’re looking for an Egyptian bomber?  I doubt we’ll be getting back into the country under that pretense.”

Sherlock prepared a petrie dish with a solution. “We’re not returning to Egypt, John.  At any rate it was obviously an inside job, as they say.”

He removed a cotton swab from a container, flicked off the lights and turned on his black light, and he held it over John’s head, delicately parting the hairs in search of fragments of luminescent dust in his hair or on his scalp.  It was not long before he was rewarded with a tiny prize, which he carefully dabbed up with a cotton swap and placed it in the solution in the dish.  He picked out several more samples.  “Patience.  Almost done.” He said when John protested. 

John’s cell phone beeped in his pocket, and he pulled it out. It was Mary.  “She knows we’re back a day early.  She will interrogate us.” John said.

“We don’t have anything to hide.” Sherlock said.  “Nothing really happened.”

The phone continued to buzz and both men watched it.  “She’ll want to know where my coat is and a set of my clothing.”

“She counts your clothes?” Sherlock wrinkled his nose at the idea.

“She’s my wife.  She knows what’s in my wardrobe.”

“A wardrobe that could use updating.  Plaid shirts?  Who wears those anymore?  You look like you stepped out of the ‘70s.” Sherlock said.  “And while you’re at it, get rid of those horrible jumpers.  You know which ones.  They’re embarrassing.”

The phone stopped buzzing and went into voice mail and John winced  “Are you done?”  When Sherlock flicked on the light, John stood up.  “Mind if I use your shower? I don’t want to go home in these fatigues.”

“Help yourself.” Sherlock said.  He took John’s place on the stool behind the microscope, and John walked out as Sherlock looked at his evidence as the microscope began to send information to the computer for analysis.  It wasn’t chemical.  It was biological.  It was organic.

He looked at the content analysis on the computer screen, carefully wrote down a series of notes, then turned off the light and turned on his black light again at the tiny little specks as he brought them up on his computer screen.  He magnified the images further.  The bits were as fine as grains of sand, but something about them wasn’t ordinary like sand.  It was, however, impossible to determine what the bits were from.  They were not, however, micro-organisms.  He scratched his scalp on reflex knowing that some of it was still in his hair.

How long Sherlock had sat there he didn’t know, but he suddenly realized how silent 221C had become.  John had only just left, or had it been a few hours already?  He got up and left the flat, bounding up the stairs.  His suitcases were still on the main floor, but John’s were gone.  “John?  John?”  He took the stairs three at a time up to 221B and opened the door.  “John?” 

He was met with silence.  It was the same silence he had felt coming back from Serbia and knowing that John no longer lived there.  For a moment he’d forgotten he was set to get married.  That wasn’t a decision he regretted, but having that time alone with John in Egypt on an adventure gone a bit awry had been utterly thrilling. 

A light rap on the door frame made him turn around.  It was Mrs. Hudson.  She eyed his camouflage and sandals.  “Don’t think that suits you at all, young man.”

“No, I suppose not.” He said.  “When did John leave?”

“At least an hour ago.  He said he told you goodbye but that he were busy with your science project.  Would you like a cuppa?  I just put the kettle on.”

“No.  Need a shower and shave.  Then I’ll order in some dinner.” He said.

“Oh! Will Molly be coming over?” she asked.

He did have a gift for Molly, but he wasn’t certain he felt in the mood for company, although if John had stayed a bit longer, that would have been tolerable.   “No.  Need time to decompress.  She understands.” He said. 

He took a long shower, even washing his hair four times while vigorously scrubbing his scalp.  Knowing that the luminescent particles were organic made him desperate to get it off of himself, and that included scraping beneath his fingernails and toenails.  He knew he’d breathed some of it in, but his body would eventually rid itself naturally of that, but he wondered if there would be any ill effects.  He conditioned his stripped hair at the last minute of his shower, knowing that his hair would be entirely unmanageable without it, even if he used a lot of taming products.  Sometimes he envied John with his shorter hair, but he couldn’t bear to have his own shorn that way.  Plus Molly would be unhappy about it.

When he had dressed and returned to the sitting room in his camel-colored dressing gown, he discovered that Mrs. Hudson had indeed brought him up a service of tea, but he felt like having coffee instead.

He turned on the gas hearth and sat down in his chair and stared thoughtfully into the flames for a bit.  “You know, John, you should have known I wasn’t really dead.  After all we’d been through, you should have known.  Why didn’t you know me better than that?”  He looked over at John’s empty chair.  Sometimes he still talked to the chair as if John were there, but he knew also that he was experiencing a few pre-wedding jitters.  John had moved on with his life and in a way had left Sherlock alone, and now Sherlock was preparing to move on with his life.  It felt right and at the same time terrifying.

There was no going back to the way things had been.  He knew that, but for those brief days in Egypt he had felt a sense of calm and routine that he hadn’t felt for a long time, and he didn’t want to lose that.  With the wedding less than six weeks away, however, he knew he had to find his bearings quickly.   

He picked up his phone and speed dialed a number. “It’s me.  Of course it’s me.  That’s obvious.  I may be having a danger night.”

Thirty minutes later Molly arrived, and as she shrugged off her coat she said, “So do you have any drugs hidden in the flat that I should know about?” she asked.

“No drugs.” He said.

“Are you craving drugs?” she asked.  “Are you feeling a relapse coming on?”

“I don’t think so.” He said.

Nevertheless she handed him a lidded sterile cup.  “I’ll need a sample.”

He started to protest, but part of his “coming completely clean” was that for a while he had to submit to random urine tests without fuss.  However, he was already growing weary of that requirement.  He glared at her slightly and nearly snatched the cup from her hand, but he went off to the bathroom and returned a few minutes later with a sample.

“Stay here.” She said.  She knew he had all the proper chemicals and equipment in his lab that she would need to test it, and she started to make her way down to 221C. 

“I have an experiment on the microscope!  Be careful with it!” he called after her.

She returned a few minutes later.  “Okay, you’re clean. So what makes this a danger night?”

“Would you like some tea?” he asked.

Although John had mourned for Sherlock for two years, Sherlock had never given himself more than a few milliseconds to mourn for the loss of his flatmate, and having been with John for the past three days had brought him to a rare state of melancholy, an emotion with which he was not too familiar, and it was unsettling.

“Sherlock—“ she started, and he cut her off quickly.

“I didn’t ask you over on the pretense of trying to get you into bed.  I didn’t.  We have an agreement, and I’m keeping it.  And I know I normally need to decompress when I come back from a little mission or casework, but I don’t think that’s a good idea at the moment.  I can make you some coffee and order food, and we can play some games or watch telly.  I just don’t want to be alone.”  He was talking so fast she could barely take it all in.  “Oh, and I got you this.”  He handed her the gift-wrapped box whose bow had become smashed in his luggage.  “Sorry about the bow.  Had to pack in a hurry.”

“Yes, why are you back a day early?”

“Got too close to something for the comfort of Antiquities.   Go on.  Open it.” He said.  “I didn’t get it at a duty free shop, I promise.”

She grinned and quickly unwrapped the box to reveal the lovely scarf.  “Oh, it’s lovely!  I love it!”  She immediately put it around her neck, and she then gave him a kiss of thanks.  She took a look at the manufacturer’s label.  “Hmmm.  Made in China.”

“It came from one of the hotel’s gift shops, I swear!”

“Well, if you ever go to China, perhaps you can find me something that was made in Egypt.” She teased.  She took his hand and led him to the sofa, and they sat down together.  “So tell me why it’s a danger night.”

He couldn’t explain it, and he hated to express it as only a  _feeling_ , because feelings were fleeting, but somehow she understood regardless.  She knew he’d spent quality time with his best friend, and although the case may not have gone as planned, Sherlock had relived a bit of his glory days with John. 

“Nothing has changed in the way that you work with John.  Mary even helps a bit, and our marriage won’t change that dynamic.  You’ve got your work, I’ve got my work, and sometimes our work will cross, but what you do and who you are will not change because of marriage.  At least I hope you won’t let it.  We’re not dewy-eyed kids fresh out of university who haven’t a clue how to live on their own or manage their finances.  We know what we want.  We know we have things we want to accomplish together.”

“Starting a family.” He said.

“That will be a by product eventually.” She countered.  “But until then—“

“More science for me, more research for you.”

“And both of us doing some serious writing.” She said. “Well, for you, when you’re between cases, and you do have a lot of down time.”

“True.” He admitted.  “I can be undisciplined with my free time.  John used to get on my case about that.”  He stretched out his legs and rested them on the coffee table in front of them.  He put his arm over her shoulders and pulled her close.  “I don’t think I’ve ever told you how much I appreciate the fact that you’ve always had my back.  It means a lot to me.  Everything, in fact.  Not many people have believed in me through the years, but somehow you did.  Why did you believe in me?”

“I’m a lost cause for hopeless cases, I suppose.” She said.

He gave her shoulders a gentle squeeze, then clapped his hands together.  “Right then.  Fancy a game of Operation?”

“No pouting if you lose.” She said.

He gave her a side glace as he practically sprang up off the sofa, walked over the table, and fetched the game from a shelf.  They played Operation on occasion, but her hands were very steady even under pressure, and she rarely lost, a fact that irritated him. 

She stayed for a few hours but then went home, and he went to bed.  She had roundly beaten him several times at Operation, and he was done.   She had, however, managed to lift him out of his melancholia, and now all he wanted was a good night of sleep in his own bed.  It was still his bed for a few more weeks, and then it would be their shared bed.  He would enjoy his last days of an entire bed to himself while he could although he equally looked forward to having her there.

Three weeks after Sherlock and John’s unceremonious return from Egypt, Dr. Liala Ebo was covertly removed from Egypt and brought back to England where she was taken to an ultra private and secret rehabilitation facility.  It was the same facility where Sherlock had spent a few months of post trauma recovery after being shot by Mary once he had been deemed fit enough to leave hospital but not fit enough to return home.  The facility, managed by MI5, was not for civilians but for agents recovering from physical trauma after various missions.  However, an exception was made for her due to her connection with ASTE and because it was believed that her life was in danger.  She would have a very long recovery there, but the facility was the best chance for optimal recovery.  She would also have complete safety.  To be at this facility was to practically disappear from the earth.  It was also a place Sherlock could have access to her to continue acquiring information.  He wanted to see the photographs she had taken of the hieroglyphics, not so much because they involved his case but more out of curiosity.  Were they what she claimed they were, or was she straining to prove a theory and the photos could easily be interpreted as something else?  Khaled Khalfani had said that the images taken were property of the Ministry of Antiquities, but Ebo had also said that in her work she often kept her own private version.  Did that mean that she had copies of the photos?  He believed she did and that they were hidden online somewhere.  As they were only a curiosity, however, he would not press her about them while she was in the early stages of her recovery.  He would stay in touch, however, even if by texting.  He owed her that much.

One week after she was settled in, he made the trip to the old Georgian estate where she was convalescing, but he went without John.  If there was information to be gleaned from photographs, it wasn’t anything he needed to involve John with.  Again he brought flowers.

She was sitting up in bed when he visited her room.  Much of the swelling on her face had gone down, and the lacerations were healing nicely, but there was still some off-color residual bruising.  She didn’t have a lot of movement, but she had regained some of the use of her hands, certainly enough to work an IPad.  She smiled a little when she saw him.  “Mr. Holmes.”

“Oh, I think we’ve gotten past the Mr. Holmes routine.  Call me Sherlock.” He said.

“Thank you for having me brought here.” She said. 

“Spent some time here myself after I was shot a couple years ago.” He said.  He untucked his shirt and showed her his belly incision scars from the surgeries.  “Had to regrow much of my liver, and my recovery was excruciating, and then I had to learn to walk again which was not as easy as one might think for having had no leg injuries.  It was a long and painful recovery, but they are the best here.  They won’t give up on you, so don’t you give up on you either.”

“Thank you.” She said.  “That means a lot to me, but why bring me here and not to a hospital in London?”

“Because I believe your life is in eminent danger.  You perhaps more than others on my case because the potential for upset your work could cause all over the world.  This facility is invisible to the rest of the world, and you are safe to recover here.”

“I suppose you heard that two more of my colleagues died.  So only two of us survived.”

“I am sorry for your continued loss.” He said. 

“I am hoping they simply died of their injuries and not that they were murdered after the fact.  The Egyptian government will bury the story.  It will soon be forgotten.  I’m quite certain I can never go back.”

“Lots of archaeology in Britain,” Sherlock tried to comfort.  “You’d be welcome here.”

“I’ve been offered a position in Israel.” She said. “I have shared the pictures with a friend in their Antiquities department.  He believes the photos are authentic, of course, but he also believes that any attempt to publish them would discredit them.  He believes the Egyptian government would say they were Photoshopped as would much of the rest of the world.  There are enough tensions in the Middle East and the Islamic countries as it is.  Sometimes the world isn’t ready for absolute truth.”

“I’m surprised they let you keep copies of the images.” He said.

“They didn’t, but I have places on the internet where I immediately uploaded them and then trusted friends in ASTE download them to a safe place.  Would you like to see them?”

“I should very much like to see them.” He insisted.

She logged into an online photo storage website, and she brought up a series of photos.  She handed him her IPAD.  “Unretouched.”

He sat back in his chair and scrolled through the images.  At times he magnified areas of the images for a better look. “These were on the tunnel ceiling.” He remarked.  That had been the part of the tunnel that had suffered the most damage.

“It was the Sistine Chapel of ancient Egypt in a way.” She said.  “Beautiful work, even if you don’t like the subject matter.”

“What time period are these?  Is there any chance they were planted?” Sherlock asked.

“Paint samples carbon dated to the time of Thutmose III.  It fits.  They pre-date the writing of the Bible’s Pentateuch, but they also corroborate part of it.  Now it is all gone.”

Something caught Sherlock’s eye in one photograph, and it wasn’t the subject matter.  It was a blue fluorescence in just one little spot.  “What is this?” he asked.  He showed her the image and blew up that section. “There was a residue everywhere.” Sherlock said.  “At first I thought it was something from the explosive device, but it is organic in compound.  It could only been seen under black light, so why does it show up in this picture?”

“Someone must have had their black light on.  Under black light, different images glowed.  You saw one thing with the naked eye, another under black light.”

“Black light technology wasn’t discovered until 1935.  The ancient Egyptians wouldn’t have had that technology.  Why would they have painted something that could not be seen with the naked eye?”

“Perhaps they knew more than we ever thought or perhaps they wanted to leave a hidden message for future generations to find.”

“What was the message?” Sherlock asked.

She hesitated for a moment as if she couldn’t get the words off her lips.  “I AM.”

“I am what?” he asked.

“Just I AM. Like when Moses spoke to the burning bush.   _That_  I AM.”

Ancient folklore of an ancient religion.  He considered it little more than a fairy tale, but something about the way she described it indicated that she considered it historical fact. Nevertheless, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

Before he could say more she continued, “Not all the Hebrews left Egypt during the Exodus.  This tomb may have been painted by one of those who remained behind.  Or it could have been painted by an Egyptian who heard the stories and believed them.  It is not possible to say.”

“What do you believe about it?” he asked.

She smiled a little. “I believe someone believed it.  Perhaps painting I AM over everything as seen as a way of protecting it.”  She wouldn’t offer anything more personal. “What do you think of the evidence, Sherlock?”

“Khaled Khalfani said you only saw what you wanted to see.  I can’t say if what I see is influenced by what you have told me or if that really is what you say it is.  However, this blacklight image of Hebrew letters…this says I AM?”

I AM was not just written in one place but all over.  It even covered the hieroglyphics and artwork.

“Yes.” She said.  “Not written by the finger of God but the paintbrush of a man.  But I know you don’t believe in such things.”

“Whether or not I have any religious inclinations towards it is inconsequential.  However, I do believe these are authentic.” He said.  “Thank you for allowing me to see them.”

“Will they help your case?”

“Not at all.” He said.  “I simply wanted to see them.  Curiosity.”

She smiled at him again and offered him her hand.  “Sherlock, if you would like to join ASTE, I should be honored to recommend you.”

He gently took her hand and kissed it lightly and then patted it.  “I’m not really the club joining type, but I’ll keep your offer in mind.”

Sherlock had saved his petrie dish with the bioluminescent samples, and upon returning from visiting Dr. Ebo in hospital, he returned to his laboratory and pulled the sealed petrie dish from a cabinet.  It was labeled  _Egyptian tomb bioluminescence - unknown._   He removed the label and put on a new label which said simply,  _I AM_.   He would certainly never forget what that meant, and whatever bioluminescent creature was used to make the paint was irrelevant.  Certainly there were plenty to be found in the anthropods in Egypt, not the least of which were scorpions.  He ran his hand through his hair and scratched his scalp a bit at the possibility of scorpion dust having been in his hair, and he involuntarily shuddered.  He immediately went upstairs to his flat and took a long shower, again scrubbing his scalp and hair vigorously.  Although he wasn’t afraid of scorpions, he didn’t like the thought of them being on him, if indeed that was the origin of the bioluminescence.

When he returned to his bedroom to dress after his shower, he took a long look at his morning tuxedo which was hanging inside a dry cleaners clear bag on the front of his armoire.  His wedding was only a week away now, and thanks to Mary, his part of it was under control.  Somehow he felt John would be useless in that department, but Mary knew exactly what needed to be done and had kept him on schedule.  Molly had delegated some of the chores to him, including flowers and the cake, and as he was inept in those areas, he had leaned on Mary’s expertise although he had the final say on all selections.  Cake and flowers ordered, his part was mostly done.

Except one thing.

John wanted to give him a night out much like Sherlock had done for him.

”You’re not planning a drunken pub crawl for me are you?” Sherlock asked. 

“We don’t have to do anything at all, really, but I think we should do something.  And of course Greg Lestrade should be invited.  I think he’s always been a bit pissed that you didn’t invite him to my stag night.”

“That would account for his alarming lack of compassion the following morning.” Sherlock said.

“Mary would be even less forgiving if we tried a repeat performance.” John added.

“Do we have to do it at all?”

“It’s tradition.  The male send off to one of the tribe. And Stamford wants in on it, but it will just be the four of us.”

“Plus Mycroft although I doubt he’ll come.  If our little group is seen out in public together, however, the Daily Mail will be all over it, and that would give things away.  It has to be quiet.  Best done at Baker Street.  Order pizza.  No singing telegrams, strippers or someone popping out of a cake.  It’ll be a loathsome affair as it is.  Bring a movie, if you want, but nothing insipid.  Just know I’ll be counting the seconds until the to-do is over.”

It was quite a soggy, cold evening when Sherlock’s stag party at 221B finally transpired in late November.  Enough pizza arrived to feed a small army, and 221B very quickly smelled of Italian dining that was almost overwhelming.  Lestrade arrived first, and John and Stamford arrived by separate taxis not long afterwards.  Myroft had reluctantly said he would try to be there but made no promises, not that Sherlock expected him anyhow, nor was Sherlock offended by his brother’s lack of participation.  If Sherlock was uncomfortable in the situation, Mycroft was doubly so.  Sherlock knew his brother had simply made an attempt to be polite but that he would not attend.

They had only just begun to gorge on pizza and beer when the power suddenly went out leaving only the flickering light from the gas fireplace.  Sherlock looked out the window.  The entire street had gone black as well as a good portion of the neighborhood.  He fetched a torchlight.

“Perfect timing.” John quipped.  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a Moriarty-inspired event.”

Everyone groaned at the name of Moriarty and Lestrade let loose a few choice swear words.  “That’s a name I could go the rest of my life without hearing again.”

“Oh I don’t know.” Sherlock said.  “Things have been a bit dull without him.  I think Scotland Yard could use a good super villain to keep it on its toes. Anyone for a game of Cluedo?”

“No!” They all shouted in chorus.

The lights came back on, and everyone cheered.  Sherlock checked his watch.  They’d all been there for less than an hour and he was ready to show them the door, but then Mike Stamford pulled out his secret weapon: a DVD of stupid things that men do, something he had compiled from various YouTube videos.  These included mostly attempts at various physical stunts that ended badly.

From what she could hear from her flat, Mrs. Hudson was certain the men upstairs were watching some sort of sporting event.  They yelled in chorus many times, sometimes in anguish, apparently.  She would have complained about the noise, but she knew it was Sherlock’s stag night, and she also knew it wouldn’t last too long.  There was, however, a lot of swearing, more than she was used to.  Sometimes there was laughter, but mostly it was horrified yelling.

Sherlock didn’t really want to watch the stupidity, but somehow he couldn’t takes his eyes off it either, and his jaw dropped open on many occasions as he winced through crashes.  When he tried to analyze what went wrong in various stunts, he was roundly told to shut up and watch, and he soon fell into a pattern of reactions with his friends.  Stupidity wasn’t his form of entertainment, and yet there was a visceral shared element of watching it with his friends. 

He had tried a few stunts in his youth, although none were as miscalculated as the ones on the DVD, and there was a part of him that still was sure he was invincible and would always survive.  Nevertheless, he was glad when the DVD was over, and he was fairly certain they were all glad it was over.  He turned to Mike.  “I wouldn’t think this would be your type of entertainment.”

“Oh it isn’t.” Stamford said.  “I just thought it would totally take your mind off the wedding for a bit.  Mission accomplished, I think.  I wanted to bring  _Alien vs. Predator_ , but I got voted down.”

“Because you always want to watch that.” John said.  He looked at his watch.  “Sorry, mates.  I have to get home.  Promised Mary I wouldn’t stay out late or come home drunk.”

Suddenly they all made their excuses and left, and Sherlock found himself alone in the apartment with half empty pizza boxes and empty beer bottles.  He’d had only one beer and a slice of pizza, and he had no idea what he’d do with the rest except to freeze the leftovers.  He started to wrap up the pizza and was putting it away when he heard footsteps on his stairs.  He didn’t have to look to know who it was.  “Mycroft.”

“Seems I missed the party although I’m not entirely disappointed.” he said.  He was carrying a bottle of wine and a large box which he set down in Sherlock’s chair.

“It was dreadful.  I wonder if a stag night ever goes well.”  Sherlock said.  “Pizza?”

Mycroft patted his stomach.  He was still in his three-piece suit from work.  “No.  Gluten intolerance.”

“Since when?”

“Since I nearly fall asleep any time I eat bread anymore.  Just can’t handle it like I used to.”  He set a bottle of fine wine on the side table, then sat down in John’s old chair. 

Sherlock took two wine glasses out of the cabinet and brought them over to Mycroft, then opened the bottle of wine and poured it out for each them.  He picked up the box in his chair. “What’s this?”

“I believe you lost something.”

Sherlock lifted the lid off the box.  Inside was the Belstaff coat he’d had to abandon in Egypt.  “Never thought I’d see that one again. Thank you.” He said.

“Simply a matter of diplomacy.” Mycroft said.

“And likely a little bribery and arm-twisting.” Sherlock added.

Sherlock sat back in his chair.  The lights flickered again but then held steady as the two brothers sat in silence in front of the hearth.

“Thank you for coming.” Sherlock finally said.

“Would have been bad form to miss it entirely.” Mycroft said.  He raised his glass towards Sherlock.  “To your next adventure in life, brother mine.”

Their glasses clinked lightly, and both men settled back in comfortable silence.  There was no need for further words.  Both of their worlds were changing with the upcoming marriage, and neither knew how to verbally address it nor did they feel the need to address it.

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of the threads for this chapter were laid out in THE BLACKBIRD SINGS AGAIN with Sherlock's code word of ENDURANCE.
> 
> If you have never read the Alfred Lansing book, ENDURANCE, I highly recommend it. For further understanding, watch the short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgh_77TtX5I

In late November, a funeral vehicle from Westminister Mortuary was loaded with body encased in a body bag on a gurney and driven away from the emergency entrance at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. As it made its way through the city, the body bag began to unzip revealing Molly Hooper.  She fully unzipped but remained on the gurney, even though it was dark out and the windows were darkly tinted.  She later transferred to a government vehicle and under the cover of darkness was taken to Sherlock’s parents’ home in Devon.  It was a successful, covert operation carried out by new MI5 recruits needing an easy first mission.

She had been watched by eager paparazzi for months as they craned for pictures at every opportunity in a gossip tumult that constantly speculated on a wedding date.  Social media was trending with #Sherlockwedding and even #Sherlockfakewedding by the conspiracy theorists who believed he was actually gay and denying it but simply getting married to put up a façade.  He found his sexual preference to be entirely irrelevant to his work or to anyone’s business, but he also found it highly offensive that some chose to believe he had been pining for John for years as he had neither the inclination and he felt it cheapened the valuable friendship they did have.  He did miss John’s companionship within the flat, but he had never thought of John as a potential sexual partner.  He had once told John that girlfriends weren’t his area, but what he failed to add was that boyfriends also weren’t his area.  Relationships in general simply weren’t his area.  His friendship with John, however, had begun to warm him, but his friendship with Molly had entirely changed his heart.  Friendships, albeit only a small circle of true friends, had become his area, his safety and sounding board, his heart.  Molly, even above his friendship with John, grounded him in a deeply profound way.  She was his compass and his lighthouse in the storm of his life.

There were rumors, all unfounded, that the wedding was booked at St. Paul’s Cathedral, then in a private chapel in Buckingham Palace, then at a little parish church in Turville.  All of these rumors and many others were covertly started by Sherlock to drive the media mad going on one wild chase after another until they were actually chasing their own tails. He made it a point to visit florists throughout the city to keep up the ruse of an impending wedding and to keep the media guessing.  He hoped they would tire of his games, but sometimes it seemed to only add more fuel to the proverbial fire.  He was annoyed by the attention focused on his private life, and he felt that when he was to marry was entirely none of their business. So he kept them scrambling for the next point in his life’s story, always to come up empty.  When one reporter asked him at the front stoop of 221B where and when he would get married, he said simply, “In the future on Planet Earth, of course, as it would be impossible for me to do so at any other time or place.”

Her wedding dress had long since been ordered, and she had refused a designer gown, insisting that she should instead wear something less ostentatious.  After all it was only being worn once, and in her mind there was no point in going above and beyond the average cost of a gown.  The gown was waiting at his parents’ house and was hanging on the back of the door of Mycroft’s old bedroom.

Sherlock had originally proposed the idea to his mother that the family home could serve as the place they would marry, and while his mother initially thought it was a lovely idea, scheduling was a problem.  His parents already had two lengthy holidays planned.  Then there was the matter of his young niece, Madeline, who was set to come for the month of August after which his parents had another holiday planned that would take them well into Fall.  Then his father insisted that hosting a wedding at the house would simply be too much stress for his mother and that he should find some place else that was suitable.

There was also the matter of the honeymoon cruise which he had already booked for December.  He had originally thought that he and Molly would marry fairly soon after his request to his mother, take a brief holiday before returning to their normal lives and then take the regular honeymoon later.  He didn’t know why he felt such eagerness to marry except that after his last mission for MI6 that involved Molly’s safety, he felt an urgency to legally cement their lives together to keep her closer.

Sherlock didn’t care if the official deed was done in a barn, a field, at the white cliffs of Dover.  The important issue was to get it done.  However, there was a deep root within him that was traditionalist.  There were certain parts of the ceremony that he wanted to experience and join the vast majority of men who had bravely done it before him.  He wanted to stand at the altar and see her walk down the aisle.  He simply didn’t want to do it in front a vast amount of people, which in his mind was any number over twenty-five.  He realized that many of his traditional ideals could not be adequately met at his parents’ home, and he and Molly had privately set the date for late November.

Of the many parish churches in Devonshire, the parish church of St. Giles, of St. Giles of the Wood, was chosen not only for its ancient and aesthetically pleasing exterior architecture but also for its interior of high white arches.  The small village also had six small access roads, roads which would be blocked for a few hours on the day for all except the locals.

As luck would have it, it began to snow that morning, and it covered the church’s grounds and gravestones with a fresh, thin layer of white that somehow seemed magical although it was quite cold.

The very small list of guests included his parents, Mycroft, Mrs. Hudson, John and Mary Watson and their child, DI Greg Lestrade, Molly’s mother, her two older brothers and their wives and young children, Mike Stamford, his little niece Madeline and her guardians, and Molly’s two bridesmaids.

While Molly had been secreted away to Devon, Sherlock had stayed behind in London, distractedly working with Lestrade on cases far below his normal compendium of crime deduction.  A murder during a robbery was hardly the kind of murder case he relished, and so it was with great relief when Lestrade finally concealed him out of London the night before the wedding.  “Of course, you know that if you hadn’t finally proposed to Molly, I would have stepped in.”

“I’ll consider you my wing man should anything unforetold happen to me, and by unforetold, I do mean death.” Sherlock said dryly.

“I just hope you’ll both be very happy together.” Lestrade said. 

“Why did you and your wife divorce?” Sherlock asked.  “Was it the P.E. teacher?”

Lestrade sighed deeply.  “No, you arse.  It was my long hours.  I don’t blame her, really.  It’s very stressful being married to someone on the force.”

“And you’d have wanted to subject that to Molly?”

“To be honest, I think she would have turned me down anyhow.  As long as you were around, no one really stood a chance.”

Sherlock cocked a half smile at the idea.

Mycroft was, of course, Sherlock’s best man despite many thinking it would be John, but John was his other groomsman.  Molly’s maid of honor was her friend Meena from work and Caroline, also from work.  Whereas Mary’s color had been lilac for her bridesmaids, Molly’s colors were peach and pink.

When the family and few close friends had been seated in the first few rows of the church, Mycroft and John took their place beside Sherlock at the altar.  Sherlock tried to stand perfectly still as if he were in complete control, but his occasional deep, terse sighs betrayed his true emotions.  He turned, looked up at the ancient architecture, sighed again, clasped and unclasped his hands and pursed his lips. Mycroft leaned close and said quietly, “Second thoughts?”

“Just want to get on with it.” Sherlock insisted.  He adjusted Mycroft’s tie and boutonniere, but he was fidgeting and knew it. 

Likewise Mycroft adjusted Sherlock’s tie, boutonniere and lapel as if such actions could calm his brother. Although Sherlock was confident in his decision to finally marry, it was the unknown that had him in a bit of a panic.  Except for a few brief holidays and some nights together, they had never spent truly extended time together.  He wondered if he would feel suffocated by the constant presence of another.  Even John could go off to his own bedroom when he lived at 221B.  Now his bedroom would be Molly’s bedroom.  He had remodeled 221C as a work space to give him a place to escape to, but if he needed a place to escape to, should he be considering marriage at all?  He knew his father often escaped to his work bench in the garage.  His mother found sanctuary in her crafting room.  Yes, he told himself.  It was normal to need to escape from the spouse at times.  Even their pre-marital counselor had suggested it could be quite refreshing to take mini vacations from each other.  Molly would be at work a great deal of the day and sometimes at nights, and Sherlock would be left alone to do what he had always done – work on cases.  They’d see each other at dinner, share their evening, and then go to bed.  They would fall into a routine, and it might become  _ordinary_.

“Sherlock.” John placed his hand on Sherlock’s shoulder. “You’ve got that glazed look in your eyes of going into your mind palace.”

“Is it over?  Did I miss it?” Sherlock asked with alarm.

“Hasn’t started yet.” Mycroft said, but at that moment someone turned on the pre-recorded music, and everyone immediately stood up.

The Maid of Honor and bridesmaid began their solitary walks up with aisle, preceded by young Madeline Holmes who came down the aisle and sprinkled pink rose petals from a white basket over her arm.  She wore a lovely pink dress that came to her ankles, pink shoes, and even pink fairy wings, and she couldn’t contain her grin of excitement.  When she got to the front she went to stand next to Sherlock, and he shook his head slightly and tried to gently push her to the other side.  “Les garçons d'un côté, les filles de l’autre.” He said very quietly. 

“But I want to stand with you.”  She had been rehearsed on her part but it was only a stern glare and slight head shake from Mycroft that compelled her to join the bridesmaids on the other side of the altar.

Molly began her walk down the aisle on the arm of her eldest brother, Ethan, and he walked her to Sherlock’s side.  Sherlock’s vision immediately went white.  The white of Molly’s gown.  Simple yet elegant.  Not a designer gown, she had insisted, but something off the rack.  He had only made one request of her ensemble – that she wear a veil over her face because he wanted the privilege of lifting the veil to reveal her complete loveliness, and she had obliged him.

The vicar presiding over the ceremony was Church of England, and although Sherlock felt no affiliation with religion, he had agreed to the traditional service.  Always best to do things the formal and proper way just to be on the safe side.  As it was, he knew he would be a difficult man to be married to, and any little help was not disparaged.

He tried to concentrate on the moment.  Was the vicar speaking too slowly or was Sherlock’s mind simply racing?  He felt her fingers entwine with his. Kneel down for a prayer blessing. Exchange of vows, exchange of rings. Another prayer blessing. Husband and wife. He lifted the veil, took her head gently into his hands, and his lips met hers.  How long he kissed her he wasn’t sure, but he became unaware of anyone else in the sanctuary.  There was only her.  Only her loveliness.  Only her scent.  Only the whiteness of her gown.  Only her beautifully styled chestnut hair that was pinned up framing her lovely face. Only the softness of her lips. Only that moment. His normal ability to take in all details of a scene were completely disengaged as his emotions overwhelmed his neural pathways.  In fact, if it weren’t for the professional photographs taken, he would not have remembered much of anything from that day

The reception was held in a large hall in another part of the church, but it would be a brief celebration.  The cake was 2-tiered and even then there was more than enough cake to go around. A traditional ceramic bride and groom topped the cake, and the inner layers alternated between lemon and chocolate with raspberry filling.  It was luscious. Sherlock’s mother ran interference with Molly’s mother while her older brothers pulled Sherlock aside and said quite seriously that if he ever hurt her, he would answer to them, and Sherlock assured them that he would never harm her nor would anyone else while under his watch. 

Mycroft gave a brief best man speech, and it was strangely touching and tender, an older brother’s pride in his young brother ending with a vow to always be there for both of them.  Glasses were raised in toast, and Sherlock noticed that Mary raised a glass of water.  He wondered immediately if she was pregnant again, but he would ask John later.   His head was swimming with so many details that he was unable to deduce much of anything.

He danced with his new bride, unwilling to let her out of his arms and also eager to show off how well they danced together.  He had been giving her lessons for several months, and she was a quick learner, remarkably fluid and graceful in his lead.

Somehow the private ceremony managed to escape the attention of the media, but it had all been meticulously planned like a covert operation with everyone sworn to secrecy.  Perhaps it helped to have a brother in M16.  The only potential wild card was Molly’s mother, but she seemed to be on her medications which made her slightly more mentally stable. 

Within a few hours of the reception they were driven to a small airstrip where a private jet would take them out of Britain to Iceland.  From there they would begin a long flight to Miami followed by an overnight flight to Santiago, Chile where they would begin the first part of their 24-day itinerary. To conceal his identity, Sherlock traveled with his passport that said “William Scott Holmes,” and Molly had to adjust to calling him “Wills” in public.  Her passport had already been pre-arranged thanks to Mycroft, and it stated simply, “Molly Rose Hooper-Holmes.”

“Sherlock Holmes, the world’s only consulting detective, is currently on hiatus.” He had said on the flight from Britain to Iceland.  “However, William Holmes, the scientist, is not.”  He would shift his persona to the part of his gifting that was under-used, that of his keen scientific mind.

In Santiago they were booked into an executive suite at the Ritz Carlton, but both had little energy for a planned site-seeing tour after the exhausting flights and the adrenalin crashes from the wedding.  They checked in with their tour group, however, before retiring to their suite.  Only a brief excursion the following day let them see the backdrop of the Andes.  They had seen the mountains from the air, but their magnitude could really only be felt from the ground.

Day three was a flight to the southernmost city in the world, Ushuaia, Argentina, where they enjoyed lunch aboard a catamaran cruise in the Beagle Channel before finally heading to the docks to board the National Geographic ship,  _Orion_.

Although Sherlock’s knowledge of Antarctica and South Georgia Island were quite extensive, he had been lacking regarding the Falklands and had to ingest as much information as he could before the cruise.  He wanted to infuse the information onto Molly but she put up her hands in protest.  “I am happy to discover it as I see it.  Anything else is a bit of a spoiler.”

He was a veritable encyclopedia of information on his beloved icy southern continent.  He knew its history, topography, could catalogue all of the explorers, knew the names of all the bases, indigenous wildlife, mean yearly temperatures and sun cycles, to the point where Molly asked, “Do you know everything about everything?”

“Only what interests me and what is expedient.” He said simply.

“So what don’t you know about?” she asked.

He thought long and hard about it and finally said, “Golf.  No interest in it whatsoever.”

Along with their normal luggage including his violin, was camping gear: a 4-season tent, two sleeping bags rated at -40°, sleeping pads, winter parkas and clothing, his microscope housed in a custom hard case, and his laptop.

The National Geographic cruise ship,  _Orion_ , arrived in Ushuaia to take them and 150 other passengers to the Falklands, South Georgia Island, and lastly, Antarctica before returning to Ushuaia.   The Antarctic cruise was the one place on earth where Sherlock felt that media cameras would not be able to follow him and where he felt he could have a pleasant, relaxed time with Molly on the 24-day trip.  They were booked into the largest suite, 502.

It wasn’t until they were actually on the  _Orion_  and at least twenty-four hours at sea and nearly to the Falklands that his parents released the news to the press that the wedding had occurred and that he was on his honeymoon.  No wedding pictures were released to the press although the location of the wedding was revealed, and John wrote a brief comment on his blog:

_“It was my great privilege on November 26 to witness the union in marriage of my two dear and beloved friends, and I wish them every happiness that life affords as they both so richly deserve it.”_

Although Sherlock was not particularly prone to motion-sickness, he did find himself feeling a bit queasy after hitting a particularly rough patch in the Atlantic between Ushuaia and Port Stanley in the Falklands.  He tried to blame it on something he ate, but a dose of Dramamine brought it back under control, and he was not bothered with it again during the remainder of the cruise.

Their first night on the ship was their first time making love since their wedding as both had felt far too tired and jet-lagged, their days and nights completely backwards, to even summon the right mood, but just being on the ship was a relief itself, and they at last had the freedom to truly regain some equilibrium.  It was also the first they had made love in the nearly six months since he had truly come clean about the hidden drugs at 221B.  They both knew he would continue to have occasional struggles with cravings, but he was faithfully on a program of attending meetings and even planned to continue the meetings via Skype while on their honeymoon.  He seemed at peace with his commitment to abstemiousness, and he was resigned without a fight to any and all random urine tests.  He was a man who had faced a formidable foe and had come to recognize and accept his own frailty to defeat it.  He had lost and was living the daily battle of maintenance and rebuilding his life.  Each day was a small victory now.

He got into the bed that night and drew himself to her and discovered that she was wearing a silk nightgown, one that she had bought specifically for that night. He had seen her wear a gown on occasions although generally not in bed.  That would be dispensed with shortly. She took his face in her hands. “Before we start, I just want one thing.” She said softly.

“What’s that?” he tried to kiss her neck but she moved to block him.

“Make love to me as if it was my first time ever and you had to talk me through every little thing.” She said. “Be the experienced lover you have become and treat me like the virgin.  Discover me all over again, Sherlock Holmes.”

He blinked rapidly for a moment to comprehend what she was asking as he remembered how slow and patient she had been with him on their first time when he had been a virgin.  She had guided and encouraged him with gentle words and tender caressing. “A reversal of our first night together.”  He gently pulled her hands away, entwined his fingers with hers and pressed them back into the mattress.  “I understand.”

Somehow he made it all new again for her.  Somehow he understood what role she needed him to assume although role-playing during sex wasn’t their normal milieu.  She wasn’t asking him to pretend that she was a virgin, however: only that he treat her like one in the same way she had been with him, and he found that request to be remarkably erotic. Although he already knew how to arouse her, it had been six long months without sex.  He reacted to her as if she didn’t know her own body, and he began to teach her all over again, relishing in every little cry and gasp he elicited from her, calming and comforting her when it seemed too intense.   _Do you like it when I do this? Does this feel good?_   _I’m going to touch you here now._    _Tell me if I’m going too fast for you.  Tell me if anything hurts._  Her words to him from their first night now echoed back to her from his lips, and she delighted his ears with her anguished cries when their two bodies finally became one again.  Although most would never believe it true of him, Sherlock Holmes had a extraordinarily tender side to his often brusque and cold persona.  In general, however, it was only ephemeral at best, and it was never on public display.

The Falklands were of little interest to him as the islands had nothing to do with Shackleton’s 1914-1916 harrowing survival tale that had fascinated him since his youth.  He nearly didn’t want to go off ship, but Molly was determined that he would see it all since it was a rather expensive cruise and since he’d never been there.  He even posed for her with a fake grin by the “Welcome to the Falkland Islands” sign that was primarily for the tourists. It was followed by his usual eye roll to which she scolded, “Behave.” He obliged her need for sight-seeing in the town, but she had to admit that she was also more interested in seeing the wildlife, which included Magellanic penguins, albatross, and elephant seals.  Molly’s camera clicked away.  She would upload her pictures daily and spend a little time each day going through them.  She had a good eye for framing her subjects, and Sherlock had given her a very nice camera set up as a wedding gift.  She had given him a lot of new lab equipment and supplies that she had been able to purchase wholesale through the purchasing department at Barts.

When the ship left Port Stanley, his excitement to reach South Georgia Island was palpable.  “How did Frank Worsley manage to get the James Caird with six men from Elephant island to South Georgia Island over eight hundred miles of open ocean on dead reckoning alone?  Dead reckoning, Molly.  What a brilliant navigator he was.”  He had brought his copy of Alfred Lansing’s Endurance with him, and he skimmed through the pages of a book he knew nearly by heart.  “He only had one decent sighting of the sun to calculate his position.”

Sir Ernest Shackleton, one of Sherlock’s heroes, was a polar explorer in the early 20th century.  In 1914 he led a group of twenty-eight men on a ship called  _Endurance_ , to Antarctica to start an expedition to be the first team to cross over the interior of the continent.  Unfortunately  _Endurance_ became trapped in the pack ice and was crushed, stranding all 28 men on floating ice with sled dogs and three life boats.  The dogs were eventually shot and eaten when food became scarce, and when the ice broke, the men boarded the life boats and made for the nearest island, Elephant Island.  However, they knew no one would ever find them there.  Six of the men, including Shackleton and the navigator, Frank Worsley, set out in one of the boats, the James Caird, over 800 miles of open water towards South Georgia Island, having only one sighting of the sun and the rest on dead reckoning.  They landed sixteen days later but on the wrong side of the island.  Three were too ill to continue, and Shackleton led two others over the Alpine interior, finally reaching a whaling station three days later.  It was a two year ordeal in all, but he saved all of his men.  He died in 1922 during another Antarctic expedition.

“And now you’ll get to meet Shackleton.  Well, visit his grave, but you’ll be within six feet of him.  Why didn’t they bring his body back to England for proper burial if he was such a hero?” she asked as she stood behind him and wrapped her arms around him

“His wife insisted he should be buried where his heart was, and it wasn’t England.” Sherlock said.

“And where is your heart, Sherlock Holmes?” she asked.

“My heart will always be with mother England.” He said, and then he added quietly, “And you.”  He turned around within her arms and faced her as he set the book down.  He checked his watch and grinned.  “Lunch in twenty minutes followed by a lecture on South Georgia.  Should be delightful!  Shall we?”

Meals were exquisite, and the dining room was always filled with lively chatter and bonhomie among both the guests and staff.  Many of the passengers had taken the trip before, and one in particular was on his fourth voyage, although it was his wife’s first trip.  Mrs. Hobbs was a 60s-ish, garrulous woman whose friendliness and quick laughter put everyone at ease although she tended to dominate the conversation at dinner.  Even though Sherlock would like to have conversed with Mr. Hobbs regarding his previous trips to Antarctica, somehow the conversation rarely steered in the direction.  Molly covertly squeezed Sherlock’s thigh more than once when she felt his cold, deductive nature starting to assert itself, as she was determined to reign that in while cloistered on the ship for three weeks.

Although he did bring his violin, Sherlock suddenly felt quite self-conscious about practicing near so many listening ears.  Despite invitations to play with various orchestras in Britain, he knew that was more about celebrity and not his actual talent which he felt was mediocre at best, and he was not going to put himself out in the music world for a critical slaughter.  He had enough criticism for his work as it was, and he had no desire to alienate professional musicians.

They both checked their emails daily, but they had agreed that he was not to work on any cases while on the honeymoon, nor was she to answer questions from work. Therefore, it was best not to even look at those accounts.  He could look at his personal account to see if there were any pressing family matters, and he sent an email to his parents, Mycroft, and the Watsons that they were safely aboard their ship and that all was well.  John was keeping tabs on the emails with possible cases as well, although the really juicy ones had abated for a while.  Sherlock sometimes wished that Moriarty was back.  Those days had been like a wicked game of chess, and he missed the challenge although he didn’t miss evil.  Many of the new crimes simply didn’t need his involvement.  He only worked on the unique ones with New Scotland Yard, and he became very selective in his private cases, almost to the point of not taking any at all.  He hoped the Antarctic trip would invigorate and renew his mind in the way that London’s crimes weren’t.

He knew he needed to diversify his talents.  He had lectured once in the Ukraine, and he had been well-received.  He had received other offers to lecture, but he had turned them down.  Perhaps, he thought, it was time to reconsider.  Then there was his writing.  He had started a book on Moriarty but had yet to finish it, and perhaps there were other books inside him to be discovered.

A squall met the  _Orion_  half way between the Falklands and South Georgia Island and although there was some talk of turning back, in the end the decision was made to forge through the low pressure system, but the outside decks were closed to passengers.    Sherlock and Molly were summarily thrown from bed during the night, sliding off the end and onto the floor, then tumbling into the furniture.  Within a few moments after landing at the foot of the dresser, they tumbled the opposite direction to the foot of the bed.  The particularly rough patch lasted a few hours during which they tried to find a way to ride out the seas without being tossed around like flotsam.   They simply pulled all their blankets and pillows to the floor and settled there for the remainder of the night.  They were still tossed a bit but not as dramatically.  All the passengers had been warned that the seas might get a little rough and how to avoid unnecessary injuries.  Even so, Molly was not at all appreciative in those moments of the honeymoon Sherlock had chosen.   It was a rough and sleepless night, but secretly Sherlock loved every moment of the adventure, bumps and all.  He had hoped for a bit of rough seas to get a feel of what Shackleton faced at times.

In the morning they were informed that they had been hit by a rogue wave that preceded the low pressure system they were still pushing through but that they hoped to be in calmer seas by lunch.  The seas were still quite choppy but nowhere near what they had been the night before.  Nevertheless, all outside decks remained closed, and Sherlock and Molly checked each other for bruises in the light.  She had a little bump on her brow and a slightly bruised left shoulder, and Sherlock had a few bruises on his arms and a lovely contusion on his inner thigh where Molly’s elbow had made involuntary contact during the tumble.

All the passengers were disappointed to learn that during the night two icebergs had been spotted as none of them had seen them, and everyone desperately wanted to see one.

“I can’t wait to see the icebergs.” Sherlock said as they cuddled in bed that afternoon, both exhausted and nearly desperate for sleep. “Just like Shackleton.”

“Are you sure we will see them?” she asked.

“The pack ice hasn’t melted as much this year as in previous Antarctic summers, so I suspect we may see a good many of them.” He said.  “Climate change be damned.”

“Has it always been your dream to visit Antarctica?” she asked.

He nodded.  “Not that I ever expected a case to bring me here, but I always hoped.  So I’m glad to bring you here like this to share the adventure with me. Visiting the other continents is easy, but this one…this one is special.”

“Careful, Mr. Holmes.  That sounds remarkably sentimental for you.”

He pulled her closer.  “You will find me sentimental in a great many ways, Mrs. Holmes.”

“I always have.” She smiled.

“What are you looking forward to seeing?” he asked.

“More penguins.  I always like the penguins in the zoo.”

He turned to her and played absently with her hair.  “They reek of fish. What else do you like at the zoo, wife?”

“The nursery.  All the baby animals that the zoo takes care of.  Oh, wait.  I’m not hinting anything about wanting a baby.  No!  I like the larger mammals too!”

She was lovely to him then, as lovely as he’d ever seen her. “Hint away, Molly.  What do you say we simply dispense with all attempts at birth control and start our own nursery?”

He was so eager to be a father that he could not disguise his heart, and she tenderly stroked his cheek in comfort. “We’ve not even been married a fortnight. Be patient a little longer.  Also, when we get back I want to have some tests done.  I’ve had two miscarriages with you, and I need to know if there’s some medical reason that I’m not carrying to term.  I mean, what if I can’t do it, Sherlock?  What if It never happens between us?”

“I won’t love you any less.” He assured her.  “I will only love you more.”

“More?”

“More to cover the hurt.” He said.   He maneuvered her beneath him, covering her with his body. “I believe…” he struggled for his words.  He wanted to express a faith in something bigger than himself, bigger than biological science, but to express a belief in something so intangible was completely unlike him and defied who he had always claimed to be.  “I believe that after all we’ve endured that surely the universe and whatever controls it, would not be so cruel as to deny us a child.” That was as close he’d ever come to acknowledging the potential of something out there that might be in control.  He kissed her sweetly, then deeply, and he made love to her in the gentle rocking of the ship.  They would make love often while on the cruise but they were on their honeymoon and that activity in abundance was expected although it never interfered with any important activities on the ship or the adventures that awaited them.

He had called John’s honeymoon a “sex holiday,” but he would have been offended had someone said that of his own honeymoon. He’d been prattish then, and now he understood that the honeymoon was a time of intense initial bonding away from the cares of the future and their daily lives.  It was not just about the sex but about being with the one he’d committed his life to.  In fact, he began to think they should take a honeymoon-like trip at least once a year.  He had mentioned taking her skiing in the Alps, but regardless, this adventure was quickly balancing the often febrile pace of his work and mind with a different kind of adventure, and he knew he would be sorry to leave  _Orion_  when it was over.

South Georgia Island proved to be the most emotional part of the voyage for Sherlock.  It was hallowed ground in a way, and had they been able to stay longer, he would have started an expedition through the Alpine interior to retrace Shackleton’s crossing from the rocky cove of King Haakon Bay on the wrong side of the island where the James Caird finally landed to the whaling station at Stromness, but there wasn’t time.  When he and a group of passengers hiked up to Shackleton’s grave in Grytviken, he and Molly briefly remained behind, and he sat down on the short grass next to the grave. “He’s here.  He’s right here below our feet.” He said as he patted the ground. There was no sadness in the statement but more a sense of awe.

“What’s left of his body is there. Like a shell on the beach.” She said.

“Oh I’m quite certain he’s well preserved in the permafrost.” Sherlock replied. “He probably looks pretty much the same as the day he died.”

“What killed him?”

“Heart attack.  Too much strain on his body with his expeditions and likely too much alcohol and cigarettes.  But what a life he lived, and what an age he lived in.” he said. 

“Perhaps his spirit is still wandering the ice, happy as a lark.”

“Perhaps.” He said absently.  He didn’t believe in ghosts and spirits, but he had a growing sense of something more lasting, something perhaps intangibly eternal.  Dare he think it?  _An eternal soul_. 

Although there was no mini-expedition to cross the interior of the Island, there was plenty of opportunity for hiking and even kayaking in the frigid waters.  Molly had no interest in kayaking, but she was happy to watch Sherlock give it a go although his inexperience made him slow and at times unstable.  She gasped more than once when she thought he was about to tip over, but somehow he summoned his strength to stay upright.

Two days later Molly pointed her mittened hand at a white speck on the horizon.  She had excellent far-sight vision, although she wore reading glasses for anything up close. “What is that thing? Is that an iceberg?”

Sherlock squinted at the horizon and then looked through his binoculars for a better view.  “I do believe so! Good spotting!”

She looked through the binoculars also and squealed with delight at her discovery.  It was the first iceberg seen on the trip, and others came out to look also, but it wasn’t long before it faded from their view as the wind carried it in another direction, but they knew they would see more as they neared the continent. 

Antarctica came into view at just past 0300.  While some passengers preferred to sleep through the moment of sighting, Sherlock and Molly had waited in the lounge with a few other stalwart passengers. Even before it was seen, however, it was felt.  The occasional  _WHUMP!_  against the hull signaled ice in the water.  These were not icebergs but the smaller pancake ice that covered the surface like large frozen white lily pads.  Chatting with the other passengers as they waited would never be his forte even if he had established a bit of camaraderie with a few.   _They_ , in his view, however, were simply steerage class tourists, whereas  _he_  was a scientist, an adventurer and explorer.  

While some tweeted incessantly about the minutiae of life on board the  _Orion_ , he and Molly maintained a personal blackout of their activities although he suspected that Mycroft was kept updated of  _Orion_ ’s position at all times via satellite.  They also avoided picture-taking with other passengers as they never knew who might see them on social media, but they did have meals with them and it was known that she was a doctor.  Although there was a medical officer on board, Molly let the first officer know that she was also available if her services were required.

Now the icebergs were plentiful as was pack ice and pancake ice.   _Orion_  could break through some pack ice but would not venture into thick ice.  Instead it chose the channels between the pack ice.  Occasionally whales could be spotted breaching in the channels.

Neither Sherlock nor Molly were lacking in their contributions to the scientific crew of  _Orion_  although Sherlock made himself more available than did Molly.  He set up his microscope immediately after leaving the Falklands and turned their cabin into a mini laboratory.  He examined deep water samples, sediment, even penguin guano.  A dead seal who had managed to escape the jaws of an orca but nevertheless died of its injuries proved a boon.  Whereas the  _Orion_  scientists examined the contents of the stomach, Sherlock took chunks of the blubber, rendered it and turned it into usable oil for an oil lantern or fuel just as Shackleton would have done.  He catalogued the weight of the blubber, the weight of the rendered oil, and how long that oil lasted, and by his findings made calculations on how many seals were needed to sustain the ice-bound Shackleton and his crew.  He wished he could taste seal and penguin meat, but killing any wildlife was understandably forbidden.   Although Shackleton and his crew had eventually shot and eaten their sled dogs when there was no way to keep the dogs and the crew alive, Sherlock was satisfied on that point.  He had reluctantly eaten dog while making his way through Mongolia while undercover during his Moriarty two-year absentia.  The taste hadn’t been entirely disagreeable, but his logical brain refused to categorize one animal’s meat the same as another’s.  A dog was a beloved companion, and he would never feel otherwise.

He didn’t often display true happiness although he did express delight, but Molly had never seen him so relaxed and truly happy, and it wasn’t all about their honeymoon.  He was fully immersed in his element with other like-minded scientists as he retraced some of the steps of one of his heroes.  He was keen to take nearly every zodiac ashore, and she went with him on many of the trips, but she also bowed out several times and allowed him the freedom to enjoy his passion by himself.  She wasn’t even certain her lack of presence would be missed by him. 

For those who were game, a chance to take a swim in the icy water was offered when the ship set anchor in Neko Harbor off the Antartic Pennisula, and Sherlock was eager to join a few other stalwart passengers in the opportunity.  Molly, however, was not keen on the idea of him doing so.

She took his face in her hands.  “Listen to me, Sherlock.  You are susceptible to pneumonia, and I don’t want you dealing with that on this cruise.”

“I will be fine.” He tried to assure her.

“Not only that, but your heart stopped on you once before.  Stopped, Sherlock.  They gave you up for dead, and that cold water could shock your heart into a heart attack.”

“That won’t happen.” He insisted.  “I’m fine. I passed my last physical with flying colors. No residual effects from that incident.”

“Your heart is not as strong as you think.”  She said.  “Please don’t do it.”

It was true that he had died on the table after being shot by Mary and that after nearly an hour of chest compressions the doctors had to make the call that his heart had simply given up from the trauma.  Once he had fully recovered, however, he had been given a clean bill of health to resume all normal activities.  Of course, taking a brief swim in the icy waters of the Antarctic wasn’t exactly a normal activity.

“Is this the way it’s always going to be?” he asked gently but there was also an authoritative sternness in his voice. “That you mother hen me because of that?  That I must second-guess my own choices for fear of your fears?  Or that I must hide that part of my life from you knowing how you will react?”

“You can’t even tolerate getting in the shower unless it’s up to temperature.” She said.

“Molly.”  There was the sternness again. 

“The shock could kill you.”

“But it won’t.” he insisted. “Molly, let me enjoy these weird and magical one-in-a-lifetime moments in this place that I will likely never visit again.”

“And is this the way it will always be for me?  That you will do what you are determined to do regardless of my concerns?”

He pursed his lips.  This was turning into a conflict, and certainly they were at a bit of a stalemate.   _Conflict resolution_.  That had been one of their more intensive discussions in pre-marital counseling.  The big issue was that Sherlock generally saw things as very black and white as well as always assuming he was right. He didn’t understand why he should ever be compelled to change his position with compromise if he was right. “You are afraid that I will have a heart attack and die if I do the icy dip. Is that what you are saying?”

“I’m saying you shouldn’t risk it.”

“Well life is a risk, isn’t it?  But I’d be more likely to get attacked by a leopard seal or an orca than to have a heart attack, but I’m not likely to get attacked by either, and I will not give into fear.  I will not, Molly.  I will not.” He insisted firmly.

They stared hard at each other for several moments before she acquiesced.  “Two minutes, no more.  Then straight into a hot shower.  Don’t try to show off.”

When it came time to make the actual plunge, he bravely strolled out onto the deck in his blue dressing gown and flip-flops.  Six of the men and two of the women were up for the challenge.  They had merely to walk down the staircase at the stern of the ship to the small platform below that hovered just inches over the water.  The platform had a ladder to assist those either going in or coming out of the water.  A crew member in full wetsuit was on hand to facilitate a rescue if needed. One slightly heavy-set, balding man was already in the water, but he was Norwegian, and this was not an unusual activity for him.  A dip in an icy body of water followed by a hot sauna was a regime he had partaken of for much of his life.

Molly stood on deck next to her husband, but she was in full winter clothing.  “Not too late to change your mind,” she insisted.

“I am intransigent on the matter.” He said as he removed his dressing gown and handed it to her, revealing Union Jack print swimming trunks as well as his scarred back and belly to the on-looking passengers and crew.  He descended the staircase to the platform.  He was already shivering, but he wouldn’t give Molly the satisfaction of knowing that.   Mrs. Hobbs slowly descended the ladder into the water, wincing, shrieking and chattering manically as each inch of her body sank into the chill, but when she got waist deep, she had had enough and pulled herself out, quickly heading back up the stairs.  The balding man climbed out as well nearly knocking Sherlock into the water. 

Rather than simply jump in or descend the ladder into the water, Sherlock sat on the edge of the platform and put his feet into the frigid water which immediately made him grimace with a shiver.  He eased himself off the side as his entire body tensed against the cold, and he pushed himself away from the dock as he lowered his torso into the water.

He felt his chest seize, as if he’d been stabbed multiple times concomitant, and he couldn’t breathe for a moment, but then he gasped and loudly swore an expletive which made those watching laugh.  “Come on in!  The water’s fine!” he insisted which was followed by another terse expletive.  He determinedly swam a few strokes in the water before he quickly pulled himself out and hurried up the stairs.  His feet and hands felt leaden and painful, and the area around his stomach scar, which was about two years old, was cramping.  Hyperthermia was already setting in.  Molly put his robe on him and rushed him inside.  He was shivering uncontrollably when they arrived at their cabin, and she immediately turned on the shower and put him in it.  “You’re not to come out into you are bright pink all over!” she insisted.

His gasping cries of agony as the hot water began to warm his flesh subsided after a few minutes into sighs of relief, and when he finally emerged with steam rising off his pinked flesh, he kissed her brow and said, “Thank you,” as he took the waiting mug of hot cocoa from her hands.  She had readied a hot water bottle for his belly.  The old wound still bothered him on occasion, but its discomfort could usually be abated with ibuprofen, a hot water bottle and rest.

That night they stood out on the deck in the freezing cold, but night was on the clock only, for the Antarctic summer sun was visible nearly twenty four hours each day.  They were both bundled securely in their parkas as they watched the faint traces of Aurora Australis dance across the slightly dusky sky.  It was so faint as to be almost imperceptible.  Sherlock wished for just one night of true darkness while they were there so that the phenomenon could be observed clearly, but that was not to be the case in the Antarctic summer.  She linked her arm with his and rested her head on his arm.  “Romantic isn’t it?”

“I fail to see how the solar wind’s affects on the magnetosphere have anything to do with romance.” He said.  “I will concede, however, that it is a magnificent atmospheric display.”

“That’s what makes it romantic.  To be here with you, enjoying it.”

To him it was a scientific, natural phenomenon and little else.  “No.” he disagreed. “Though I might be slightly more inclined to the idea were we to be making love under such a display.  But as it is ten below zero at the moment, that’s not going to happen.”

“London and our normal lives there seem so far away, don’t they?” she asked.

“Geographically it is far away,” he said.

“Do you miss it?” she asked.

He had hardly thought of London since being so immersed in his life-long dream of experiencing the Antarctic.  It did seem far away, almost to the point of not existing at all, as if it was fading from his memory.  Part of him didn’t want to go back.  He wanted to continue in the honeymoon bubble with her on this southern most adventure.

“Molly, I don’t know how to be a husband.” He said in an uncharacteristically vulnerable moment. “I’m not even entirely certain what it means.”

“I’ve never been a wife before either.” She said.  “I suppose I’ll be rubbish at all the expected wifey things.”

“Example?” he asked.

“I don’t know.  Hoovering, dusting, cooking, general cleaning.”

“You’ve always been rubbish at those things.  I don’t expect any different.” He said. 

“Oi!” She mock punched his arm. “You’re supposed to stand up for your wife.”

“That would be pandering in this case, but I will concede your cooking has greatly improved since my mother’s instruction.  That said, I do not expect you to put three meals on the table every day.  We’re both working professionals with heavy demands on our time and energy, so we shall endeavor not to add stress to our marriage with exorial mores.”

She didn’t know what “exorial” meant but let it slide.  Sometimes his vocabulary was annoyingly posh, and she was determined to secretly increase her own vocabulary to keep up.  “We’ll figure out what works best for us.” She said.  “We don’t have to fit into a traditional mold.”

“Yes.  As I just said.” He agreed, and they shook mittened hands on it.

One night was spent camping on a large icy bank overlooking an adelie penguin colony near the shore, which when the wind blew in the wrong direction brought a wave of stench into the camp of seven tents.   Sherlock was like a giddy schoolboy, anxious to recreate a night like Shackleton must have experienced.  Molly was far less convinced of the merits of the idea as she envisioned being very cold all night despite their gear.  “I promise to keep you warm.” He insisted with a wink.

“Two of us will not fit in one mummy sleeping bag.” She said. 

“That is why we zip two of them together.” He replied.

It was a balmy 2° C that night but felt like -10° with the wind chill, but Sherlock Holmes nevertheless managed to make quick if somewhat awkward love to his new wife in the restrictive confines of their sleeping bags as the susurration of the wind and the fluttering of their tent’s outer layer drowned out any little noise that may have been made, although both tried to be completely silent.  They had no desire to disturb their fellow ice campers with the heat of their passion.  He said afterwards that sex on the Antarctic continent had been one thing that Shackleton had never done there. It was a tiny, if hollow, victory over his hero. 

The darkness never came.  There was only a period of lesser light, and the rest of the time was completely bright which lent itself to poor sleeping once they actually got down to sleeping. They were surprisingly warm the remainder of their time in the tent, and after a hearty breakfast cooked over small butane stoves, they spent the morning on their bellies on the rocky, odiferous beach observing a large colony of adelie penguins.  When Molly spotted a dead penguin she quipped, “Murder most fowl.”

Her words went over his head for a moment, but then the pun clicked.  He cocked a half grin, and his eyes crinkled with delight at her witticism.  “Bon mot, Molly.”

She didn’t look at him but added, “You see, I can tell a joke.”

“Yes, you most certainly can.” He said.

They explored part of a glacier in the late morning before returning to the comfort of  _Orion_.  The wind was still blowing, and the icebergs had moved into close proximity to the ship.   _Orion_  raised her anchor and moved a safer distance from shore lest she be trapped, even though it was the Antarctic’s summer.  Although much of the pack ice was abated, the vagaries of the wind kept the unpredictable icebergs on the move.  They could be beautiful from a distance and treacherous up close.

A pod of orcas was spotted later that afternoon. There was lots of picture taking and video recording, and Molly spotted a leopard seal resting on a small iceberg.  She was always on the lookout for penguins and thought it wonderful that they could be found on the most obscure icebergs in the middle of nowhere.  She had a great many misconceptions about icebergs and sea ice, but she never expected to fall in love with their beauty, and she found herself taking countless pictures, always hoping to find the special ones that had been carved into unusual, magical shapes by the waves. 

It was at the point of seeing the orcas that Sherlock fetched his violin and began to play it on the ship’s bow.  He wanted to see if the large mammals would respond in any way, but they had disappeared from view.  He continued playing, however, with Molly at his side when she suddenly gasped as a very large orca swam directly below where they were standing.  The animal returned after a few moments, still skimming just below the surface but on its side to get a look at what was happening.  And then there were four orcas near the ship, and they began spy hopping to get a better listen.  Molly began to take pictures at a furious pace.  The curious animals seemed interested in the music for several minutes before disappearing beneath the water and not surfacing again until they were a few hundred feet away and obviously back on their journey.  Not only had Molly managed to take many pictures, she had also taken a three-minute video of her new husband playing for the orcas.  It would become one of her most treasured things taken from the journey.

Having each gained nearly five pounds on the ship’s fine dining, they found their clothes just a bit tighter at the end of the voyage than when they had left England.  As anticipated, Sherlock was a little sad to leave  _Orion_  when the ship returned to Ushuaia.  He could have happily gone for another round or two, but their lives were awaiting them in London, and so they began the long series of flights that took them back to Iceland where once again a chartered plane awaited, and they returned to the private airstrip in Britain where John was waiting for them with welcoming smiles and hugs.  Immediately, however, it was back to business.

“Remember that maths professor at Cambridge?” John asked.

“Professor Durbin.  Of course,” Sherlock said as he and Molly got into the back seat of the car.  “Decent man but much ado about nothing.  Case closed.”

“Consider it reopened.”

“Why?”

“He’s dead.”

 


	9. Chapter 9

Professor Durbin was dead.  It was not the news Sherlock wished to return home to after his honeymoon.  He had planned to have a few days with Molly where they could settle in together and recuperate from the return jetlag and enjoy their first Christmas together, but Durbin had already been dead for a week and was still in the morgue, and Durbin’s wife had specifically asked for Sherlock to examine the body.  When she learned he was about to return for his honeymoon, she asked that the body be held in the morgue even though the Cambridge Medical Examiner had given his opinion and the police considered the matter little more than a terrible tragedy. 

John knew very little about the death except what was reported in a small blurb online.  Apparently Durbin had drowned in the River Cam which ran through Trinity College, the very river that Sherlock and Durbin had walked beside during their first visit.  Drowning seemed like an implausible death to Sherlock, however, even just from hearing the word. 

“Professor Durbin apparently wanted his body donated to science, but the wife won’t let that happen until you’ve taken a look at it.” John said in the car on the way back from the private airstrip to Baker Street.  “She wants you to rule out…”

“Murder.  She wants me to rule out murder.  But surely I’m not expected to go up immediately.” Sherlock said.  “I just got back.” He gripped Molly’s hand firmly and patted it as if trying to convince himself that staying was the right thing to do.  Leaving his new bride within minutes of their arrival back at 221B after returning from their honeymoon was awkward and, he suspected, and more than  _a bit_   _not good_.  He put his arm around her shoulders in the back seat of the car and pulled her close as if the present a unified front.  The stalemate lasted only a few moments, however.

“No.  You should go.” Molly assured him, and he immediately sighed with relief.  “I’m going to unpack and get settled in, get my bearings.  I’ll be fine, and you’ll just obsess about it until you do get there.”

“By the time I get up there, look at the body, then get back, it will be very late, and I’ll just have to turn around and go right back tomorrow to talk to his wife and the police and anyone else on campus.  But you could come.  You could help. We could extend our honeymoon.  We could get a hotel room in Cambridge.”

A part of her did want to go, but she was determined from the start not to get in the way of his cases, and she knew that their honeymoon was over.  This was what their life would always be: that his casework would interrupt their lives at the most inopportune times.  She might have been tempted to go had John not been in the front seat listening to their entire conversation, but this was something he and John shared, and she wasn’t going to be divisive. 

“You always said you were married to your work, and I believe your first wife is calling you.” She insisted.  “I’m bloody knackered.  Really, you and John go.”

Her words irritated him slightly, not because he was annoyed with her but because he didn’t want her to think of herself as second to his work.  Yet he also did not contradict her.  They had been communicating so well on their honeymoon, but now he was immediately slipping back into old habits, habits that he didn’t know if he could break.  He wasn’t used to sharing his decision making or even verifying if it was correct.

Upon arriving at 221B Baker Street, however, the reality of the bubble they had lived in for nearly four weeks was brought back into focus.  They were on the cusp of Christmas, and someone, they presumed either John and Mary or Mrs. Hudson, had gone to the trouble to set up a Christmas tree and a few decorations with a  _ **WELCOME HOME!**_  sign.  There were a few gifts under the tree, and there were piles of unopened wedding gifts on the sofa. 

No, he knew immediately that he could not go to Cambridge that night.  Durbin was dead and there was nothing his rushing up there would do to change that.  In fact, he knew Durbin’s body could remain in a morgue for up to a year if necessary as long as it was kept at the right temperature and showed no signs of decay.  He also knew, however, that the medical examiner would be anxious to close the case and that Addenbrooke would be anxious to have the body as a teaching tool.  But to leave his new wife two days before Christmas, was bad form.  He tried to convince himself that he really wanted to stay in the warm glow of 221B, but he couldn’t deny the pull towards Cambridge.

“John and I will just go up, have a look at the body, and I’ll be straight back.  The rest can wait until after Christmas, I promise.  No need to spoil the season further for anyone.” He said as he kissed her brow.  “I won’t be too late. Don’t try to unpack everything and put it away.  Just leave it for later.”

“I told you to go, so go.”  She insisted.  “I’ll wait up.”

Within ten minutes of arriving back at 221B he was gone with John to catch the evening train to Cambridge, and Molly was left in the silence of the flat that was now her new home.  Only it didn’t feel like home.  It felt like  _his_  home even with all the decorations.  She looked at the enormous mound of luggage, suitcases, hard cases for equipment, camping gear.  She didn’t know where to store some of it anyhow, and nearly thirty-six hours of being in airports, flying, waiting… she was physically and emotionally empty.   Although she had hoped to sleep on the plane, she had also wanted to savor every last moment of the time.

She set Toby down and numbly picked up the stack of mail.  Bill Wiggins had faithfully brought her mail from her old flat to 221B, and Mrs. Hudson had collected all the mail on Baker Street, and there was an enormous pile of it.  She separated out the obvious well-wishing cards.  They could open those later together.  Of course there were bills.  Some would be shut down as their lives consolidated, but some would always be hers alone.  They were all late now, but she’d deal with them tomorrow.  One envelope, however, caught her attention.  It was large brown envelope marked _Royal Society of Medicine_.  She found a letter opener on Sherlock’s desk and deftly sliced open the envelope and removed the contents.  It was the latest issue of the publication with an attached letter.  She flipped through quickly to the page they mentioned, and she gasped.

_**Post Mortems and The Evident Clues Disregarded During Patient Diagnosis and Treatment** _

by Dr. Molly Hooper

Molly Hooper was a published author.  It was the article she had written based on her notes for the speech she had given in the past spring.  It was her first published research article although it wouldn’t be her last, but she was alone in her achievement.  The one person she would like to have celebrated with was already on a train somewhere in the bowels of London on his way to make a connection to Cambridge. She carefully put it back in the envelope and laid it on his desk.

Mrs. Hudson came to the door with Toby in her arms, and tears immediately came to Molly’s eyes as she took her cat into her arms and cuddled him.  She wasn’t crying because she had missed him but because she was too tired to think straight anymore, and she was slightly annoyed that Sherlock had chosen the case work over her despite the fact that she had told him to go.  She would have preferred to have a few days to settle in together, get unpacked and rest.  She doubted there was anything fresh to eat in the refrigerator, and she didn’t have the energy to go shopping.

“Everything all right, dear?” Mrs. Hudson asked.

“I’m just very tired and a bit hormonal.  Not much sleep on the plane.  My ankles are swollen from sitting so long.”  Molly insisted.    

“It’s overwhelming, I understand, and then him rushing off like that.  Come on, then.  Let’s get your feet elevated.” she said.  “I’ve just put clean sheets on the bed.  You’ll feel much better after a rest.”

Mrs. Hudson helped Molly to lie down on top of the bed, and she pulled the two pillows from what would be Sherlock’s side, and she propped them up under Molly’s ankles, and then she covered her with the duvet.  “Too much sitting, too much salt.  People can have heart attacks on planes from that.  I’ll make you a cuppa, and we’ll get that swelling down in no time.” She said. 

When Mrs. Hudson returned several minutes later with a tray of tea, however, Molly had already fallen asleep, and Toby was curled up against her neck.

Sherlock had been more torn about leaving Molly than he had indicated, and he was seriously tempted to turn back even though he didn’t.  He would be gone for several hours and would definitely return that night, but even so, he sensed he should have waited until the following day at least.  After all, Durbin was already dead, and nothing was going to change that.  He was, however, quite perturbed that Durbin was dead.  How inconvenient of him.  On some level he felt as though he’d failed to take the professor’s concerns more seriously, and that he was perhaps a little responsible for the death.  He didn’t know how he could have prevented the death, but after Dr. Ebo’s near death in Egypt, he was now certain that someone or a group of someones was targeting ASTE members.

He stared out the train window, lost in thought,

“So… how was it?  Being at the bottom of the world?” John asked.

“Wasn’t ready to come home.” Sherlock replied.

John raised his brow at the thought and cocked a half smile, and Sherlock caught the slight movement. 

“Not for  _that_ reason,” Sherlock said. “No, John.  I was completely in my scientific element.  It made me feel alive and full of purpose in a way I haven’t felt for a long time.”

“That’s definitely the honeymoon bliss talking.” John insisted. 

“No.” Sherlock insisted.  “It was more than that.  Much more.”

“So are you saying you don’t want to do this anymore?”

“Whatever gave you that notion?” Sherlock asked sharply as he shook his head and rolled his eyes at his friend.  “I’ll just be looking to balance my consulting work with my scientific research while trying to finish some of my writings.”

“Until Lestrade calls with a case.”

“Those days seem to be happening less frequently.  Either the criminal classes have moved on or Scotland Yard has become smarter.  I do miss the challenge of a reputable villain.”  He rubbed his gloved hands together and then looked directly at John.  “I did the right thing, didn’t I?  She did tell me to go.”

“She did say it, but sometimes what a woman says and means are two different things.”

“Well, we’ll be having none of that.” He said crisply, but he was clearly unsure. “Which do you think it was?”

John shrugged. “She’s your wife, mate.  You’re on your own.”

“You’re no help at all.” Sherlock nearly snapped.

They arrived in Cambridge just as the sun was setting.  A light rain was falling, and it was bitterly cold, the kind of damp cold that permeates to the bone’s core .  Sherlock turned up his collar and adjusted his scarf a little, but his breath hung in little mists in the air.  If he was going to be cold, he preferred to be back in Antarctica.  At least there was a purpose to the cold here.  Cambridge was simply damp and miserable on that winter’s day, and his stomach was beginning to growl.  His appetite had been indulged on the Orion, and now that he was back in England, he needed to bring it back under control, but at the moment his stomach was demanding to be sated.

From the rail station, it was only a short taxi ride down to Addenbrooke’s Hospital where Durbin’s body was being held in the morgue.  Sherlock had phoned in the taxi drive from Baker Street that he and John would be arriving in a few hours, and per the request of Mrs. Durbin, they were to be granted access to his body. 

Addenbrooke, much like St. Bartholomew’s, was a teaching hospital, a part of the NHS, and one of their specialties was liver transplants.  During Sherlock’s long recovery after being shot, there had been some talk of having him air-lifted to Addenbrooke for more specialized treatment, but Sherlock had refused to leave London.

The two men walked into the front doors, signed in, were issued visitor badges, and they waited for several minutes in a nearby lobby for someone to escort them to the mortuary.  They were met by a perky young medical student with a mouth full of orthodonture, who seemed to also assume to be their tour guide as well as Addenbrooke’s historian.  She was a veritable encyclopedia of Addenbrooke.  If she knew who Sherlock and John were, she didn’t let on, but she seemed so absorbed in doing her job of escorting them that she would have hardly pratted on any differently.  Perhaps she assumed they were there to see the body of a dead relative or friend and that it was her duty to maintain a cheery disposition.  Either way, both men breathed a sigh of relief when they reached their destination and the student left them in more capable hands.

They were met by a middle-aged Indian doctor, Saty Raghavachary, who seemed slightly put out with them.  “We only have three drawers for bodies, and the one has been taken for a week now waiting for you to come see the corpse.”

“I was a little busy on my honeymoon, and I did practically come from the South Pole.” Sherlock said.  “Now, I do hope Professor Durbin hasn’t been tampered with, because I will know if anything is amiss although a pity he’s been moved from the crime scene.”

“No one said anything about it being a crime, and we couldn’t very well leave him in the water for a bloody week until you got here.” Raghavachary said curtly.

Durbin’s body was laid out on a steel table in a small theater room.  It was, after all, a teaching hospital, and students could watch and participate in autopsies in the room, but there were no students in the room at that hour.  Dr. Raghavachary pulled back the sheet that covered Durbin, and Sherlock looked down at the shell that was left of the man he had come to appreciate.  Had Durbin lived, he was certain they might have become good friends.

Sherlock said.  “How much of the River Cam was in his lungs?”

“Not much.” Raghavachary said. 

“Don’t you think that’s odd?  A man supposedly drowns and his lungs aren’t filled with water?”  Sherlock asked.

“I wasn’t present when he was pulled out of the river.  I do know the paramedics tried to revive him but he was already gone.  Hence the lack of river water in his pulmonary system.”

Sherlock pulled out his tool kit and removed his small magnifying glass while John also inspected the body although it was very cold and stiff.  Even so, certain residual signs of the end of his life remained: a wedding ring still on his finger as a knuckle swollen from rheumatoid arthritis kept it from being removed; the cataract starting in his left eye; one leg slightly shorter than the other which could have been adjusted by a chiropractor.  Apparently he didn’t believe in them.

“Sherlock, look at this.” John said as he lifted Durbin’s stiff, cold hand, and Sherlock immediately moved to John’s side.

Although Durban was not given to manicures, his nails were unnecessarily rough on the ends, and there were a few abrasions on his knuckles.  The forearms too had small contusions, and the half moon indentations – fingernail marks from someone else.  They might have been put there by whoever pulled him from the river, but not likely.    Even more, there was a contusion on the back of his head, hidden beneath his hair.  It had bled at one time.  A broken ankle.   All these assessments were made in less than five minutes.

Sherlock straightened and tucked his magnifying glass back in his kit.

“So? Can we free up the drawer now?” Raghavachary asked.

“Certainly not.” Sherlock said.

“Why?” Raghavachary was nearly spitting.

“Because it’s murder, that’s why.  And because it’s Christmas.” Sherlock said.  “We shall be back to resume our investigation when the holiday is over.  Science will have to wait.”

“You got all that in five minutes?”

“One actually, although I suspected it before I arrived.” Sherlock tipped his head slightly and said, “Happy holidays.” 

Sherlock started to walk out and John immediately followed but grabbed his arm.  “We came all the way up here for five minutes?”

“What did you think was going to happen?” Sherlock asked.  “We’ve looked at the body, and that’s all there is for now.  We’ll pick it up again the day after Christmas.  For now, it’s time for me to go home.”

“Next time we’ll only be some place for five minutes like this, you’re on your own.” John said.

“Lovely tribute on your blog, by the way.  We were quite touched.” Sherlock interjected.

Somehow he had instantly diffused John’s annoyance and John cracked a half smile. 

In general when Sherlock left Baker Street, his journeys back always seemed faster that his goings out, but not this time.  As soon as they were back on the train he could feel himself begin to unwind, his body aching for sleep all the while his brain was matching possible scenarios for the marks on Durbin to how he could have died.  He shuddered to keep himself awake, and there was an ache in the pit of his stomach.  He was hungry, but he knew that if he ate anything at all that the carbohydrates would put him to sleep almost immediately.  Food would have to wait.  He did, however, get a small cup of coffee on the train.  Anything to keep him alert.   He yawned several times.  He filtered anything John might have said, but to keep him quiet finally handed him his IPhone so that he could look at the Antarctic pictures.  He hadn’t taken nearly as many pictures as Molly, but he had managed to sneak a few candid photos of her, though nothing distasteful or revealing.  Mostly the photos had a wistful quality to them.  The way the light caught her stray hairs, the warm light of the dining room late at night, the smoothness of her shoulder.

“These photos of Molly are really quite extraordinary.  Maybe you should frame a few of them.”

Sherlock was a bit horrified that John had seen them and quickly snatched his phone back.  “Forgot those were there.  Please do the same.”

“Who would have ever thought in those first days we met that we’d be sitting on a train some day going home to our wives. And me with a child.”

“And another on the way?” Sherlock asked.

John pursed his lips. “How did you know?”

“She drank water at the wedding.” Sherlock said. “No other reason to do that than she’s expecting.  May?  June?”

“Late June.” John said. “Don’t tell her we discussed it.  She was planning on telling you herself.”

“Not a word.” Sherlock assured him.

He did not bound up the stairs at 221B when he arrived home.  It was a weary climb, and when he entered the flat, only the kitchen light was on for him.  She hadn’t waited up for him, but to be fair, it was past midnight, and he knew she had been tired.  Even so, he would like to have been greeted.  He had looked forward to that one little thing and didn’t receive it. 

He sat down on the edge of the bed and began to undress, and when he had finished he quietly slipped between the sheets.  He turned towards her and gently stroked her cheek, and she opened her eyes at him.

“That could have waited a few more days.” He said with a heavy sigh of complete exhaustion.  “Sorry.”

“No, I’m the one who is sorry.” She said. “I wasn’t ready.”

“Ready for what?” he asked.

“To be separated.  To get back to our normal lives.  I wasn’t ready. I need more time.” 

He could see the glint of tears in her eyes, and he simply pulled her into his arms and comforted her in the gentleness that he only showed her. 

“For the record, you are more important to me than my work, and I never want or intend for you to feel otherwise.   I am so sorry.” he murmured softly.

He would not always be this attentive, but for now their marriage was still fresh and sweet, and she slept against him for the remainder of the night.  He kept his arm curled around her and stayed awake until he knew she was asleep again, and then he allowed himself to relax and drift into blessed sleep.

Sherlock slept for nearly twelve hours, and when he finally did rouse, he felt as tired as he did before he’d gone to bed.  Jetlag had set in firmly.  His brain wasn’t alert, and he was quite thankful that he had not got back on the train to return to Cambridge.  He knew that if he wasn’t careful he would come down with a cold at best and pneumonia at worst.  He blindly stretched out an arm to her side of the bed to be met with a ball of fur.  Molly was not there but Toby was completely comfortable on her side. 

Wrapped only in the top sheet, he padded through the kitchen and into the sitting room where he glanced around for his tea.  Usually Mrs. Hudson had a service waiting for him, even if he slept late, but there was nothing this morning.   _One month away and all routine has gone to hell._  Although he knew the refrigerator to be empty, he nonetheless opened it as if hoping for a miracle, but there wasn’t one although Mrs. Hudson had apparently taken to time to give it a proper cleaning while he was gone. 

He walked into the sitting room and sat down at his desk, and the RSM envelope caught his attention.  It was open but still contained the contents.  He knew instantly what it was and smiled to himself.  He was proud of her.  He removed it from the envelope and scanned the cover letter, then turned to the article, smiling again when he saw her name in print.  There was no reason to read it, however, as he had read and proofed it before she had sent it off to the RSM. 

He checked his emails, and he scanned through them quickly, coming to one from John a few hours earlier.   

                 _Sherlock,_

_Don’t want to alarm you, but Mary found this rubbish, and you should at least be aware of it.  Let me know if there is anything I can do._ _ Link _

_John_

Sherlock clicked on the link and was brought to a Tumblr blog.

There was a candid picture of him taken with a cell phone the day before while he was on the train to Cambridge with John, and the anonymous blogger wrote,

_Just got back from his fake honeymoon with his fake wife and he couldn’t wait to get away from her and back to his old boyfriend.  What’s next?  A fake pregnancy and baby?  I give it six months if he can even pretend that long._

An anonymous responder replied,

_It’s sickening.  What a scam.  They can’t hardly be seen in public together.  And that wedding?  Yeah, I don’t buy it.  More fakery.  She’ll have to get a donor if she really wants a kid. She’s probably not even a real medical professional._

And a third anonymous quote:

_Everything about them is fake, especially him.  Like that fake death thing he did for two years.  She probably helped him.  Maybe she’s just his back-up plan to make him seem normal, but the man’s a psychopath.  I guess that makes her a psychopath enabler.  It’s just gross._

He felt as if he’d been stabbed in the heart with a frozen knife.  He knew it was complete drivel, but it reminded him of the lies Moriarty spread about him.   _Repeat a lie long enough and people will believe it._  He knew he had haters, although most of those were in prison, and he generally swatted them down like pesky midges, but the outright lies about his relationship with Molly or his sexuality were bitter, vengeful, and outright mean.  This was not done by someone in prison but out on the streets, someone who was perhaps stalking him.  He tried to remember who had been immediately around him on the train, and he cursed himself for having been too tired, for his lack of alertness.  He took another look at the photograph hoping to find a reflection in one of the windows, but the mystery of the photographer eluded him.

His ears were alerted to the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs, and he immediately clicked off the browser tab.  He would erase that website from his viewing history later.  Molly walked in then.  She’d been out getting some groceries, and had two heavy bags in each hand.  “There’s not a thing to eat in here except tinned beans.  I used your credit card.  Hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not. Anytime.  I’ll have your name added to the account today.” He said as he took the bags from her and carried them into the kitchen, all the while trying to maintain control of the sheet.  He set the groceries on the counter and then turned to her.  Her brow was a little furrowed at him, and he rolled his eyes.  “Fine.  I’ll put something on.” 

He walked out of the room and she called after him, “Are you hungry?” 

“A bit.  Mrs. Hudson has not brought up my tea.  Has she gone out?  Has she moved?  Has she been murdered?”

“Oh stop. I’ll make it.” She said, and she turned on the Russell-Hobbes kettle and then set about preparing a lunch for him.

When he returned a couple of minutes later, he was dressed in pajama bottoms, a dull grey t-shirt and a dressing gown.  “I have no intention of leaving the flat today, so I see no reason to dress further.” He insisted.  “I feel like I’ve been run over by a lorry which then backed up over me again.”

They both stayed in for the remainder of the day and set about opening gifts and cards and carefully recording who sent or gave what so that a proper thank you note could be sent out.  Most interesting was the card from the Queen herself giving congratulations.  Not in her handwriting, of course, but it was a nice gesture.  Sherlock wondered if he were again in good graces with the monarchy.  His pardon for shooting Magnussen had undoubtedly put him at odds and he was certain would ruin any chance of knighthood, not that he really cared about that anyhow.  Meanwhile their luggage remained almost untouched and they both simply walked around it.  Added to that there was now a heap of refuse from opened gifts as well as the gifts themselves.  Some people sent money.  Some sent gift cards, some sent actual things that now needed to find a place in the flat that seemed already burgeoning with things.

He turned to her as they sat on the sofa and he placed his hand on her knee.  “I saw the mail from the Royal Society of Medicine.  I think a celebration might be in order.”

“What did you have in mind, Mr. Holmes?” she asked.

“Dinner tomorrow night.  You pick the place.  Anywhere you want to go in London.”

“Christmas Eve?  We’ll never get a reservation.”

“You leave that to me, Mrs. Holmes.” He said with a wink.

Christmas Eve arrived with a thick fog that seemed to roll up the Thames and stretched its opaque fingers with a stranglehold up every street.

For the newly married Holmeses, however, it was a night that started with a trip to the ballet to see a performance of  _The Nutcracker_  followed by a later dinner at the Ritz.  Both were dressed elegantly, and had fur been in fashion, he would have had a fox coat on her. 

Although Sherlock did want to have a celebratory night with his wife, he also wanted to see what pictures might show up on social media the following day.  Did he in fact have a stalker?  Or was it simply a hater?  Was Molly in danger?  He knew he shouldn’t give two thoughts to the drivel, but he was actually quite concerned that Molly might find it and be terribly upset by it.  To those who wanted to believe the lie, there would never be enough evidence to convince them of the truth.  Everything would be misconstrued to fit their lie.  If they held hands in public, it would be forced and fake.  If they didn’t it would be because he couldn’t actually stand to touch her.  The paparazzi did on occasion follow him, certainly more since he had announced his engagement, and now they would be following him post-honeymoon.  There would be speculation about pregnancy based on what she wore.  The war with the haters and conspiracy theorists was not a war that could be won on social media.  Perhaps time would quell the problem, but perhaps it wouldn’t, and that concerned him.  He didn’t wish to strongly suggest that she avoid social media or quit it altogether, but he sensed a need to protect her

His fake suicide had not put an end to the lies Moriarty had started.  For a while it had seemed to backfire by only adding fuel to the raging flames of gossip about him that were already out of control, but after about eight months the fires had quelled, and his name rarely came up in the press.  People stopped visiting his grave, and life moved on in London as if his very existence had been but a tiny ripple in the fabric of time and was soon forgotten.  Even so, there were two London publishing houses that had managed to each put out a biography on him, all the information being derogatory and mostly fabricated based on gossip press.  One had hit the best-seller list for a few weeks.  The lies about him were still out there and would always be out there.  It was a price he would pay for the rest of his life.

Anderson’s social media blog had been one of the few places that provided a platform for those who hadn’t believed Sherlock was dead.  He had seen the blog and how much negativity and personal attacks Anderson had received in the comments.  Some even suggested that he should go jump off a tall building like his hero.  Anderson had not only lost his job with NSY, he had suffered a humiliating beating on social media.  He wondered how much of that Molly had seen or if she had tried to divorce herself from any press during those years.  They had never talked much about how she felt after he truly disappeared undercover. 

As they basked in the afterglow of love-making in the early hours of Christmas morning, a session she might have described more as a bull rutting, he finally drew up the courage to broach the subject.

“Is that what all that just now was about?  That you were trying to prove something?” She asked.

“No!  Of course not!” he insisted firmly, but then he realized.  “Maybe it was in the back of my mind somewhere.  Sorry.  That wasn’t my best for you, was it?”

“Well, you finished but I didn’t.” she said simply.

“Sorry again.” He said.

“Sherlock, I know it’s out there.” She said. “I’ve seen some of it, but I know what the truth is about you.  I’ve always known. Why does it bother you?”

“I only care when they lie about you and what we have together.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t read it, then.” She said simply.

That wasn’t quite the response he had anticipated.  She had turned the tables on him unexpectedly, and now he wasn’t certain how to handle it. 

“But they claim we’re fake!” he blurted.

“What does it matter what the nutters think?  We know the truth.”

It was a moment of clarity for him.  It was a moment of  _absolute truth_.  While there were many things he considered truth in his life or his approach to problem solving, very few things were absolute.  His relationship with Molly, their love for each other, and their bond was absolute.  He understood in a microcosm what Liala Ebo had tried to explain.   _There was absolute truth in the world._   As if as if a large crack opened in his awakening soul, he became determined at that moment to begin a lifelong search for absolute truth and to examine all he held true to see if it was true although he still had no intention of joining ASTE.

He suddenly bolted from bed and padded into the sitting room.  His chart was still on the wall above the sofa.  He took a marker and wrote under the far right column of irrefutable truths,  _Sherlock + Molly_.  He drew a large heart around his words, even though the heart’s outline spilled into the middle column. Satisfied, he returned to the warmth of bed.

“What was that about?” she asked.

“Just had an epiphany.” He replied.

“Do you get those often?”

“Not as often as I used to.” He said.  “But I have a feeling I’m going to get them more frequently.”

He didn’t consider the matter closed, however, and he would continue to monitor that particular Tumblr page for any clues to who was stirring the festering pot. 

He turned to her and drew her beneath him.  “Now to finish you off properly, wife.”

Later that morning they sent out an email wishing a few people a happy Christmas with a picture of them in Antarctica that he had doctored in Photoshop to say “Merry Christmas – The Holmeses,” and they looked through all the photographs and video she had taken and quietly reminisced about a place that had been only a week before. 

They had a little breakfast of tangerines, fruitcake and poached eggs on toast, then opened their Christmas gifts for each other before returning to bed where they rested, make love, talked and whispered the treasured secrets, yearnings and even a few sweet nothings that no one would have ever thought him capable of.  In the security and privacy of his own home and in the trust he had with no one else in the world except Molly Hooper, however, he was able to release that part of his tightly guarded heart.

“I have to go back to Cambridge tomorrow. I’ll leave early and will likely be gone all day, perhaps not returning until late again.” He said.  “Are you all right with that?”

“Yes.  Absolutely.” She insisted.

“No.  I mean, are you properly all right with it?” he pressed again.

“Yes, properly, I promise.” She said.  “I’m sorry about before.  I was tired and probably a bit hormonal.  I’m not ready for the honeymoon to end.”

“Just because we’re back doesn’t mean it’s over.” He said.  “We can stretch it out as long as we like.  Can you get another fortnight off?”

She was scheduled to return to work on New Years day, which was only a week away, but she had to admit that she needed a little more time with her new life before reincorporating her work, and she promised to look into it.

“I’ll just pop over to Barts for a bit tomorrow and see what can be done.” She said.

“Be sure to take your RSM article and show that around a bit.” He said with a wink.

He roused early the following day to catch a timely train that would afford him as much time in Cambridge as possible during the day, and she left a few hours later for Barts with her RSM magazine tucked neatly inside an oversized purse to conceal it.

And she was followed.


End file.
